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Chapters on Animals. 



BY 



PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, 

AUTHOR OF " THE' INTELLECTUAL LIFE," "a PAINTER'S CAMP," "THOUGHTS 
ABOUT ART," " THE UNKNOWN RIVER," ETC 




RECEIVED. ^ \ 




BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1882. 






University Pr^ss : John Wilson £: Son, 

Cambridge. 



By tranaf— 



PREFACE. 



Having been in the habit of loving and observing animals, 
as people do who live much in the country, I thought that 
possibly some of my observations, however trifling in them 
selves, might interest others whose tastes are similar to my 
own. In this spirit I wrote these chapters, describing what 
I had seen rather than what other writers had recorded. The 
book has therefore no pretension to system or completeness, 
but consists merely of desultory chapters, as its title indi- 
cates. 

P. G. H. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. 








PAGE. 


I. THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE 






I 


II. DOGS . - . 










17 


III. DOGS (continued) < 










32 


IV. CATS 










43 


IV*. HORSES 










61 


V. HORSES (continued) 










77 


VI. THE BOVINES . 










, 96 


VII. ASSES 










> 113 


VIII. PIGS 










127 


IX. WILD BOARS . 










142 


X. WOLVES . 










. 156 


XI. KIDS 










. 174 


XII. OTHER ANIMALS 










. 188 


XIH. BIRDS 










. 197 


XIV. BIRDS (continued) 










207 


XV. ANIMALS IN ART 










221 


XVI. CANINE GUESTS 










236 










DECEIVED. % 




CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 



READERS of Dean Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold will 
probably remember a passage, brief but highly interest- 
ing, in which reference is made to his feelings about the 
brute creation ; — ' In works of art he took but little 
interest, and any extended researches in physical science 
were precluded by want of time, whilst from natural his- 
tory he had an instinctive but characteristic shrinking. 
" The whole subject," he said, " of the brute creation is 
to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not 
approach it." ' 

Mystery indeed there is everywhere, and it is often 
painful ; but surely in shrinking from the contemplation 
of nature the loss is greater than the gain. That all 
animals are condemned at one period or another of their 
existence to undergo suffering, often very severe sufifer- 

B 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



. ing, and that in their utmost anguish they have no con- 
solation from religious or philosophical ideas, that they 
have no hope beyond the limits of a day, and that 
their existence is most probably limited to the brief 
space between birth and death, — this is the dark side 
of their being, which we need not attempt to hide. But, 
on the other hand, the life of the brute has commonly 
one immense compensation in its favour, the perfection 
of the individual existence is so rarely sacrificed to the 
prosperity of the race. It is not necessary in order 
that one hippopotamus should cut his food conveniently 
that another hippopotamus should lead an unhealthy 
existence like a Sheffield grinder ; nor does the comfort 
of any bird's nest require that another bird should 
slowly poison itself in preparing acetates of copper, 
sulphurets of mercury, or oxides of lead. The pride and 
beauty of a brute are never based upon the enduring 
misery of another brute. The wild drake's plumage, 
splendid as it is, suggests no painful thought of con- 
sumptive weavers, of ill-paid lace-makers, of harassed, 
over- worked milliners ; and the most sensitive of us may 
enjoy the sight of it without painful thoughts, for it 
is God's free gift, causing no heart-burning of envy, no 
care nor anxiety of any kind. There is much slaughter 
in the world of brutes, but there is little slavery, and the 
killing is done with a merciful rapidity, ending life whilst 
its pulses still beat in their energy, and preventing in- 
firmity and age. The brute creation has its diseases, but 
on the whole it is astonishingly healthy. It is full of an 



THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 3 

amazing vitality.* The more we study animals the more 
evident is it that they live for, the most part in the 
heaven of exuberant health. That gladness which we 
seek, how often vainly, in all artificial stimulants, — in 
wine, tea, gin, tobacco, opium, and the rest, — the brute 
finds in the free coursing of his own uncontaminated 
blood. Our nervous miseries, our brain-exhaustion, are 
unknown to him. Has not one of the sweetest of our 
poets, who knew those miseries of the intellectual, poured 
forth in immortal verse his passionate longing for the 
' clear keen joyance' of a skylark ? Which of us has not 
envied the glee of his own dog ? Human happiness may 
be deeper, but it is never, after earliest infancy, so free 
from all shadow of sadness or regret. 

It is probable that Dr. Arnold's disinclination for the 
study of animal life, and his painful feelings regarding it, 
had their origin in a peculiarity of his which made him 
such an excellent schoolmaster — the intense pleasure with 
which he contemplated moral and intellectual advance, a 
pleasure which had for its shadow a feeling of intense 
disgust for incorrigibles. To a man with these feelings 
always highly- wrought, and even rather over- excited by 
the nature of his work, a man always anxious to make 
good Christians and cultivated gentlemen, the brute world 
must have seemed a very discouraging kind of material. 

• This in consequence of the law, apparently pitiless, yet when seen in 
Its large results most merciful, that the weak and diseased so rapidly dio 
off, that the strong and healthy remain and propagate, whilst the organ!* 
zations ill adapted for vigourous life perish and disappear. 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



What changes nature may operate in millions of years, 
what marvellous developments may lead up gradually to 
higher orders of being, we need not attempt to estimate ; 
it is enough for us, that from the dawn of history the 
animals most familiarly known to us seem to have done 
the same things, and done them in the same way, as their 
successors in our own fields and on our own hearth-rugs. 
We have evidence that the donkeys of antiquity were 
obstinate and self-willed, and the donkeys of the nine- 
teenth century are so still. But in this persistence of 
characteristics there is nothing, I think, to sadden us. 
The brute does not, it is true, aspire after the ideal, 
and his views, it must be confessed, are usually limited to 
the fullest and most immediate gratification of his appe- 
tites, but he has so many negative advantages that we 
may think and speak of him with cheerfulness. If he has 
not the support and consolations of religion it is because 
he does not require them, and he escapes the evils of 
theological rancour and persecution which have caused so 
much misery to mankind. He escapes, too, the mean- 
ness of hypocrisy, which is one of the least pleasing of the 
peculiarly human vices. So with regard to the politics of 
brutes — they are royalists, or republicans, or socialists, or 
they push to an extreme impossible for mankind the 
principles of independent individualism ; but whatever 
they are they know their own mind, and incur neither the 
evils of anarchy nor the perils of transition. How much 
weariness has there been in the human race during the 
last fifty years, because the human race cannot stop poii- 



THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 



tically where it was, and, finding no rest, is pushed to a 
strange future that the wisest look forward to gravely, as 
certainly very dark and probably very dangerous ! Mean- 
while have the bees suffered any political uneasiness, 
have they doubted the use of royalty or begrudged the 
cost of their Queen ? Have those industrious republic- 
ans, the ants, gone about uneasily seeking after a sov- 
ereign ? Has the eagle grown weary of his isolation and 
sought strength in the practice of socialism ? Has the 
dog become too enlightened to endure any longer his 
position as man's humble friend, and contemplated a 
canine union for mutual protection against masters ? No, 
the great principles of these existences are superior to 
change, and that which man is perpetually seeking, a 
political order in perfect harmony with his condition, the 
brute has inherited with his instincts. 

The study of animals inclines men to a steady cheer- 
fulness. All naturalists are cheerful men, unless there is 
something peculiarly sad or painful in the individual lot ; 
and even then the study of natural history has in many 
instances been known to supply an interest which enabled 
the sufferer to bear his affliction more easily. The con- 
templation of animal life may act at once as a stimulant 
and an anodyne. The abounding vitality of animals 
communicates a strong stimulus to those energies which 
we have in common with them, whilst on the other hand 
their absolute incapacity for sharing our higher intellectual 
vitality has a tendency to make us happily forget it in 
their presence. Your dog will run and jump with you as 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



much as you like, but it Is of no use to talk to him about 
your business anxieties or your literary ambition I 
believe that most of the attractiveness of what is called 
4 sport,' is to be found in the happiness of association with 
the lower animals. Take away the animals from a hunt ; 
suppose that there were neither horses nor dogs, nor stag, 
fox, wild boar, or any other animal whatever, but that 
the men rode on velocipedes after a machine going by 
electricity — who does not at once feel that the deep charm 
of the chase would be gone ? Few will deny that falconry, 
though far less destructive than shooting, was a- more 
perfect sport ; for the falconer associated himself with the 
bird of prey that he had trained with hood and jesses and 
lure, and watched its aerial evolutions. The pleasure of 
falconry was to be a spectator at one's own hours of a 
sight which every naturalist has occasionally witnessed 
in his rambles — the bird of prey in the exercise of his 
terrible function. The noble of the middle ages, who was 
a bird of prey himself by instinct and tradition, felt the 
deepest sympathy with the hawk, and carried him every- 
where on his wrist as poor women carry their babies ; but 
the modern student of nature may sympathise with the 
hawk also, notwithstanding our modern tenderness. We 
may always sympathise with an animal, because the 
animal is sure to do his appointed work ; the business of 
the falcon being to destroy birds for his own sustenance, 
he does it without any infirmity of doubt He hurls him- 
self like a barbed javelin, and the sharp talon delivers its 
deadly stroke. Since the work, in Nature's order, had to 



THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 



be done, there is a satisfaction in seeing it done with that 
swiftness and decision, that perfect vigour and ability. So 
the old knights often took the falcon for a crest, and he 
sat in effigy on their helmets, tossed above the dust of the 
battle-field. 

But the knight's sympathy or the sportsman's sympa- 
thy for animals is more narrow, though not more intense 
by reason of its narrowness, than the sympathy of the 
naturalist or artist Since falconry is dead the falcon 
would be doomed to extinction if gamekeepers had their 
way ; and the sportsman thinks that if an animal is not 
either good to hunt or be hunted, does not play the part 
either of hound or hare, there can be no sufficient reason 
against its total extermination. So the agriculturist has 
his way of considering animals, with his two categories — 
the beasts that can work for him and the beasts that can 
be sold to the butcher. But there is another way besides 
these, that of the observer who studies the aninal from 
some kind of interest in nature without reference to any- 
thing that it can do fcr him or produce for him. The 
selfish pre-occupation always hinders us from observing 
in the best and largest sense. Some excellent observers 
have been sportsmen and agriculturists ; this partly from 
accident, because they had land in the country, and partly 
from hereditary tendencies derived from sporting or agri- 
cultural ancestors: but it is possible to kill animals everyday, 
and make animals work all day long, and sell animals at 
every fair in the neighbourhood,without knowing very much 
more about their lives and characters than they know of 



c :-:.-: ?7izs c.v j:;::-:jl$. 



yours and mine. I have see- men who had not the least 
insight into the characters of their own horses or their 
own dogs. It grates very unpleasantly on the feelings of 
any true lover of animals to see them treated as beings 
withtut any individuality ::" mental ct nstitutitn. There 
are people to whom a horse is a horse, just as a penny 
postage-stamp is a penny postage-stamp ; that is, a thing 
which will convey a certain weight for a certain regulated 
distance. But any one who knows animals knows that a 
horse has as much individuality as a man, And the more 
we know, even of inferior animals, the more distinct does 
their individuality become for us. It is only our ignorance 
and our indifference which confound them. The two bay 
horses in your carriage look exactly alike to the people 
i:t the street, tut the ttithntaa and vr: :nt ttuld establish 
contrasts and comparisons after the manner of Plutarch. 
With the varieties of canine character we are all of us 
tolerably familiar, because our dogs are more with us, 
happily for us and for them. Yet how difficult it is to 
arrive at any true conception of the mind of a lower ani- 
mal ! The moment we begin to reason about it a thick 
cltud rises and curves between. We streak tfthent habi- 
tually as if they had human feelings : a dog is spoken of 
very much as if he were a child, yet he is not a^ child ; 
and e give to horses many capacities and attributes 
which horses never possess. There is an insuperable 
difficulty in imagining the mind of an animal ; we lei*d 
him words, which he never uses, to express thoughts 
which could not occur to him. We are constantly misled 



7 HE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 



by the evident clearness of the minds of animals, by the 
acuteness of their perceptions in certain directions, and 
we infer that this clearness and acuteness may be applied 
where they are of no use. The truth is, that animals are 
both more intelligent and less intelligent than we fancy. 
A dog, and even a horse, notices a good deal that we 
little suspect him of noticing, but at the same time a great 
deal which we think he sees is perfectly invisible to him. 
The following account of the behaviour of a cow gives a 
glimpse of the real nature of the animal : — 

' These long-tailed cows/ say Messrs. Hue and Gabet, 
' are so restive and difficult to milk, that, to keep them 
at all quiet, the herdsman has to give them a calf tc lick 
meanwhile. But for this device, not a single drop of 
milk could be obtained from them. One day a Lama 
herdsman, who lived in the same house with ourselves, 
rame, with a long dismal face, to announce that his cow 
had calved during the night, and that, unfortunately, the 
calf was dying. It died in the course of the day. The 
Lama forthwith skinned the poor beast, and stuffed it with 
hay. This proceeding surprised us at first, for the Lama 
had by no means the air of a man likely to give himself 
the luxury of a cabinet of natural history. When the 
operation was completed we found that the hay-calf had 
neither feet nor head ; whereupon it occurred to us that, 
after all, it was perhaps a pillow that the Lama contem- 
plated. We were in error ; but the error was iiot dissi- 
pated till the next morning, when our herdsman went to 
milk his cow. Seeing him issue forth, the pail in .unhand 

C 



to cj^pn.is z v a:"::al~. 

and the hay-calf under the other arm, the fancy occurred 
to us to follow him. His first proceeding was to put the 
hay-calf down before the cow. He then turned to milk 
the cow herself The mamma at first opened enormous 
eyes at her beloved infant; by degrees she stooped her 
head towards it, then smelt at it, sneezed three or four 
times, and at last proceeded to lick it with the most 
delightful tenderness. This spectacle grated against our 
sensibilities ; it seemed to us that he who first invented 
this parody upon one of the most touching incidents in 
nature must have been a man without a heart A some- 
what burlesque circumstance occurred one day to modify 
the indignation with which this treachery inspired us. By 
dint of caressing and licking her little calf, the tender 
parent one fine morning unripped it ; die hay issued from 
within, and the cow, manifesting not the slightest surprise 
nor agitation, proceeded tranquilly to devour the unex- 
pected provender.' 

T:.z his: ::■_:/. entirely r_hr.:i the br_:e. She hii 
reczrrhied her zrTscring by the smeh :hierhy, i?.z never 
hiving heiri ::" ~r.s.::~y is n:: surprised *.vher. the 
internal organs are found to consist simply of hay. And 
why not eat the hay ? The absence of surprise at the 
discovery, the immediateness of the decision to eat the 
hay, are perfectly natural in a cow, and if they surprise 
us it is only because we do not fully realise the state of 
the bovine mind. If we reflect, however, we must per- 
ceive that a cow can be aware of no reason why calves 
should not be constructed internally of hay. On the other 



THE LIFE OF THE BR UTE. 1 1 

hand, the bovine mind cannot be wanting in its own kind 
of intelligence, for oxen know their masters, and when in 
harness are remarkable for a very accurate and delicate 
kind of obedience ; indeed the horse is light-headed and 
careless in comparison with them. 

Animals, like the great majority of the human race, 
observe only what concerns them and see everything 
simply in the relation which it bears to themselves. In 
Gustave Dore's * Juif Errant' a donkey is tasting a man's 
beard, under the impression that it may possibly be a sort 
of hay. Dore most probably had witnessed the incident ; 
I have witnessed it several times. Why should a man's 
beard not consist of hay? There are physiological 
reasons, but we cannot expect a donkey to be aware of 
them. We continually forget that brutes have not the 
advantage of obtaining accurate ideas by spoken or 
written language. We do not realise the immensity of 
their ignorance. That ignorance, in combination with 
perfect cerebral clearness (ignorance and mental clearness 
are quite compatible), and with inconceivable strong 
instincts, produces a creature whose mental states we can 
never accurately understand. None of us can imagine the 
feelings of a tiger when his jaws are bathed in blood and 
he tears the quivering flesh. The passion of the great 
flesh-eater is as completely unknown to civilised men, as 
the passion of the poet is to the tiger in the jungle. It 
is far more than merely a good appetite, it is an intense 
emotion. A quite faint and pale shadow of it still remains 
in men with an ardent enthusiasm for the chase, who feel 



12 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

a joy in slaughter, but this to the tiger's passion is as 
water to whisky. This impossibility of knowing the. real 
sensations of animals — and the sensations are the life — 
stands like an inaccessible and immovable reck right in 
the pathway of our studies. The effort of dramatic power 
necessary to imagine the life of another person is very 
considerable, and few minds are capable of it, but it is 
much easier to imagine the sensations of a farmer than 
those of his horse. The main difficulty in conceiving the 
mental states of animals is, that the moment we think of 
them as human we are lost. Neither are they machines 
pushed by irresistible instincts. A human being as 
ignorant as a horse would be an idiot, and act with an 
idiot's lack of sense and incapacity for sequence. But the 
horse is not an idiot, he has a mind at once quite clear 
and sane, and is very observant in his own way. Most 
domestic animals are as keenly alive to their own inter- 
ests as a man of business. They can make bargains, and 
stick to them, and make you stick to them also. I have 
a little mare who used to require six men to catch her in 
the pasture, but I carried corn to her for a long time 
without trying to take her, leaving the corn on the ground. 
Next, I induced her to eat the corn whilst I held it, still 
leaving her free. Finally I persuaded her to follow me, 
and now she will come trotting half-a-mile at my whistle, 
leaping ditches, fording brooks, in the darkness and rain, 
or in impenetrable fog. She follows me like a dog to the 
stable, and I administer the corn there. But it is a bar- 
gain ; she knowingly sells her liberty for the corn. The 



THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 13 

experiment of reducing the reward having been tried Xo 
test her behaviour, she ceased to obey the whistle and 
resumed her former habits ; but the full and due quantity 
having been restored she yielded her liberty again with- 
out resistance, and since then she is not to be cheated. 
On the other hand, she is very ignorant of much that a 
man of equal shrewdness would easily have picked up by 
the use of language. In our estimates of animal character 
we always commit one of two mistakes, — either we con- 
clude that the beasts have great knowledge because they 
seem so clever, or else we fancy that they must be stupid 
because we have ascertained that they are ignorant ; so 
that, on the one hand, we constantly see animals severely 
punished for not having known what they could only 
have learned through human language, and, on the other 
hand, we find men very frequently underrating the won- 
derful natural intelligence of the brute creation, and 
treating animals without the least consideration for their 
feelings, which are often highly sensitive. 

Another obstacle to a right understanding of the brute 
nature is the common habit of sentimentalism, which 
attributes to some favourite races of animals some fine 
qualities, which, if they are to be discovered at all, can 
only be detected in most rare instances, and, even then, 
are striking rather from their rarity than their strength. 
A good example of what I mean is the popular belief 
concerning the affectionateness of horses. The plain 
truth is, that the horse is not an affectionate animal but 
that man wishes he were so, and supplies him with this 



14 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

charming quality from the resources of his own imagi- 
nation. The horse may be made familiar; you may 
cultivate his intimate acquaintance, as acquaintance 
merely, but his affections are not for man, they are for 
his brute companions.* 

It seems to me, that notwithstanding the insuperable 
difficulties which hinder us from a perfect comprehension 
of the brute nature in any of its forms, we may still, by 
careful observation and reflection, aided by a kindly 
sympathy and indulgence, arrive at notions about animal 
life not altogether without interest. Let us always try 
to bear in mind those great necessities which are irre- 
sistibly felt by animals as a consequence of their special 
organisation, and preserve ourselves from the error of 
approving or blaming them according to human standards. 
When a tiger eats a man, the act is not more blameable 
than the act of a man who opens and eats an oyster 
We have the most absurd prejudices on this subject, 
which have taken root in infancy and not been disturbed 
by maturer reflection afterwards. Wolves and falcons 
seem cruel because their prey is rather large, but the 
little insect-eating birds are our pets, and cats are 
morally esteemed for catching mice. A word may be 
said in passing about the morbid love which many people 
have for animals, and foolishly encourage as a virtue. 
Some people love their dogs in a manner not at all con- 

• I have been told lately that Arab horses are capable of strong affection 
for their masters, which, if true, may have been the origin of tue popular 
belief. 



THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE. 15 

ducive to the dogs' true happiness and welfare. I knew 
a lady and gentleman who loved their dog so much that 
he had a chair at the dinner-table, and slept at night (he 
was a large retriever) in the same bed with his master 
and mistress. I had the honour of sitting opposite to 
him at dinner, and was much edified by his well-bred 
manners. He ate soberly from a plate, like the rest of 
us. But it is not a kindness to pamper animals of any 
kind ; the -true way to be kind to animals is to order their 
living in every way that they may be cheerful and 
healthy through their allotted span of life, and we ought 
not to hesitate about putting them to death when in- 
firmities make existence a burden. So with reference to 
animals slaughtered for our use, there can be no moral 
hesitation if only the most merciful death is chosen. It 
is wrong to bleed calves to death slowly, as is done in 
England to have the veal white ; it is wrong to tear out 
the eyes of rabbits while yet living, as is done in some 
parts of France from a notion that the meat is better for 
it ; it is wrong to give geese a liver complaint in order 
to make Strasbourg pies; but a true gourmet will hesitate 
at no cruelty if it procures him a perceptible increase in 
the delicate delight of tasting. As to that great horrible 
question of vivisection, which men of science do really 
practise much more than is commonly suspected, the 
discoveries effected by it have prevented, they say, much 
suffering, but the doubt remains whether a merciful end 
can justify means so frightfully merciless. The young 
veterinary surgeons at Maisons-Alfort do actually learn 



i5 c:~:jp7irs :v.:v:::.::5. 

to operate by practising on living horses, which are 
saved from the knacker for that purpose ; and the same 
science which inflicts tortures worse than those of the 
Inquisition prolongs the misery of the victims by the 
most solicitous care in the intervals between one opera- 
tion and another. Finally, after from twenty to sixty 
operations, the animals die from sheer inability to endure 
any more torture; and still the sky is bright over 
Mais:ns-Ai::rt, and the htuses are pretty and fanciful, 
and the gardens sweetly luxuriant, and there are arbours 
for pleasant shade where the well-to-do messieurs and 
carries sit sip p i rt ~ their c:."ee and ccgnac. A pretty 
place in the summer, but the hell of horses, punished for 
no sin ! 



17 



CHAPTER II. 

DOGS. 

There is a little skull amongst the bones I have col- 
lected for the study of anatomy, which any slightly 
scientific person would at once recognise as that of a dog. 
It is. a beautiful little skull, finely developed, and one 
sees at a glance that the animal, when it was alive, must 
have possessed more than ordinary intelligence. The 
scientific lecturer would consider it rather valuable as an 
illustration of cranial structure in the higher animals ; he 
might compare it with the skull of a crocodile, and 
deduce conclusions as to the manifest superiority of the 
canine brain. 

To me this beautiful little example of Divine con- 
struction may be a teacher of scientific truths, but it is 
also a great deal more than that. My memory clothes 
it with mobile muscles and skin, covered with fine, short 
hair, in patches of white and yellow. Where another 
sees only hollow sockets in which lurk perpetual shadows, 
I can see bright eyes wherein the sunshine played long 
ago, just as it plays in the topaz depths of some clear 



1 8 CHAPTERS GN ANIMALS. 

northern rivulet. I see the ears too, though the skull 
has none ; and the ears listen and the eyes gaze with an 
infinite love and longing. 

She was the friend of my boyhood, reader, the com- 
panion of a thousand rambles, and when she died my 
boyhood was dead also and became part of the irrecover- 
able past. There is an indentation in the bone, due to 
an accident. How well I remember all about that 
accident ! How tenderly we nursed her, how glad we 
were when she got well again and followed me accord- 
ing to her wont ! I wonder how many miles we have 
travelled together, she and I, along the banks of our own 
stream and out on the purple moors ! 

Of course the reader cannot be expected to care very 
much about a poor little terrier that only loved its young 
master, as all dogs will, by reason of the instinct that is 
in them, and died more than eighteen years ago. I am 
willing to believe that millions of dogs have been as good 
as she was, and a great deal more valuable in the market, 
but no skull in the best natural history collections in 
Europe could tempt me to part with this. Every year 
makes the relic more precious, since every year certain 
recollections gradually fade, and this helps me to recover 
them. You may think that it is a questionable taste to 
keep so ghastly a reminder. It does not seem ghastly to 
me, but is only as the dried flower that we treasure in 
some sacred book. When I think by how much devoted 
affection this bony tenement was once inhabited, it 
seems to me still a most fair and beautiful dwelling. The 



DOGS. 



prevailing idea that reigned there was the image of me, 
her master. Shall I scorn this ivory cell in which my 
own picture had ever the place of honour ? 

Many a man past the middle of life remembers with 
a quite peculiar and especial tenderness that one dog 
which was the dear companion of his boyhood. No 
other canine friend can ever be to us exactly what 
that one was ; and here let me venture to observe that 
the comparative shortness of the lives of dogs is the 
only imperfection in the relation between them and us. 
If they had lived to threescore years and ten, man and 
dog might have travelled through life together, but as it 
is we must either have a succession of affections, or else, 
when the first is buried in its early grave, live in a chill 
condition of doglessness. The certainty of early death is 
added to the possibility of accident. I had a dog of great 
gifts, exceptionally intelligent, who would obey a look 
where another needed an order, and of rare beauty both 
of colour and form. One evening in the twilight we went 
out together, and, as cruel fate would have it, I crossed a 
valley where there was a deep and rapid stream. Rapid 
and deep it was, yet not much wider than the Strid at 
Bolton, and there was a mill and a narrow rustic bridge. 
My poor dog lingered behind a few minutes in the deepen- 
ing twilight and I called for him in vain. He had tried 
to leap across between the bridge and the mill, and was 
hurried to destruction along an irresistible current, be- 
tween walls of pitiless stone on which he had no hold. 
I cannot think of that twilight even now without 



20 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

painful sorrow for my poor, imprudent companion. 
Ail dogs are worth keeping, but there are very great 
differences in their natural gifts, and that one had a 
rare intelligence. He would sit studying his master's 
face, and had become from careful observation so acute a 
physiognomist that he read whatever thoughts of mine 
had any concern for him. 

When the theory of selection has done its worst, I still 
cling to the belief that the relation between dog and man 
was as much foreseen and intended as that between sun 
and planet Man has succeeded in domesticating several 
other animals, but where else has he found this spirit of 
unconquerable fidelity? It has not been developed by 
kind treatment, it has not even been sought for in itself, 
or made an aim in breeding. Ladies make pets of their 
dogs, but all the shepherds I see around me pay them in 
kicks, and curses, and starvation. What does the obscure 
member of a pack of foxhounds know of his master's 
love? As much as a Prussian private in the rifle-pit 
knew of the tender heart of Moltke. I have seen a great 
deal of the life of the French peasantry, but never to this 
day have I seen a peasant caress his dog othenvise than 
with a stick or a wooden shoe. There is a well-known 
picture, by Decamps, called ' The Kennel,' which repre- 
sents a huntsman visiting his hounds, and he is lashing 
with a ponderous whip. Thousands of dogs, whole gene- 
rations of them, have known man in no other character 
than that of a merciless commander, punishing the 
slightest error without pity, yet bestowing no reward. 



DOGS. 21 



There are countries where the dogs are never fed, where 
they are left to pick up a bare existence amongst the 
vilest refuse, and where they walk like gaunt images of 
famine, living skeletons, gnawing dry sticks in the wintry 
moonlight, doing Nature's scavenger- work like rats. Yet 
in every one of these miserable creatures beats the noble 
canine heart — that heart whose depths of devotion have 
never yet been sounded to the bottom ; that heart which 
forgets all our cruelty, but not the smallest evidence of 
our kindness. If these poor animals had not been made 
to love us, what excellent reasons they would have had 
for hating us ! Their love has not been developed by 
care and culture, like the nourishing ears of wheat ; but 
it rises like warm, natural springs, where man has done 
nothing either to obtain them or to deserve them. 

I please myself with the thought that every man is, or 
may be if he will, a centre round which many kinds of 
affection press with gently sustaining forces. Let us 
not undervalue the love which rises up to us from below, 
bathing our feet in warmth. Only the love of animals, 
and that of children whilst they are still quite young, is 
absolutely free from criticism. All our contemporaries 
criticise us ; even our wives do in their hearts, and our 
sons in their adolescence. The man in his family lives in 
a glass case, and cannot quite withdraw himself. He is 
surrounded by more affection than the bachelor, but he 
incurs in a minor degree that amenability to criticism 
which is the penalty of a prime minister. The criticism 
may not be openly expressed, but so soon as he acts inde- 



22 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

pendently of the family opinion about his duties he feels 
that it is there. It is exceedingly salutary, no doubt ; it 
keeps us in the path of duty and dignity; it saves us from 
many aberrations. And still, upon the whole, we know 
ourselves to be such lamentably imperfect characters, that 
we long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. 
Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine 
attachment. Women love in us their own exalted ideals, 
and to live up to the ideal standard is sometimes rather 
more than we are altogether able to manage ; children in 
their teens find out how clumsy and ignorant we are, and 
do not quite unreservedly respect us ; but our dogs adore 
us without a suspicion of our shortcomings. There is only 
one exception, but this is a grave one, and must not on 
any account be forgotten. A good sporting dog has always 
an intense contempt for a bad sportsman, so that a man 
who cannot shoot with a decent degree of skill does best, 
like a miserable amateur violinist, to abstain from prac- 
tising altogether. 

There are thousands of anecdotes illustrating the 
wonderful affection which dogs bear to their masters, and 
as the world goes on thousands of other examples will be 
recorded, but no one will ever know the full marvel of 
that immense love and devotion. It is inexhaustible, like 
the beauty of what is most beautiful in nature, like the 
glory of sunsets and the rich abundance of that natural 
loveliness which poets and artists can never quite reveal. 
We do not know the depth of it even in the dogs we have 
always with us. I have one who is neither so intelligent 



DOGS. 23 



nor so affectionate as others I have known, and to my 
human ignorance it seemed that he did not love me very 
much. But once, when I had been away for weeks, his 
melancholy longing, of which he had said nothing to any- 
body, burst out in a great passionate crisis. He howled 
and clamoured foradmission into my dressing-room, pulled 
down my old things from their pegs, dragged them into 
a corner, and flung himself upon them, wailing long and 
wildly where he lay, till a superstitious fear came on all 
the house like the forerunner of evil tidings. Who can 
tell what long broodings, unexpressed, had preceded 
this passionate outburst ? Many a dark hour had he 
passed in silent desolation, wondering at that inex- 
plicable absence, till at length the need for me became 
so urgent that he must touch some cloth that' I had 
worn. 

We know not the heart-memory which these animals 
possess, the long-retaining, tender recollection, all bound 
up with their love. A dog was bereaved of his master 
and afterwards became old and blind, passing the dark 
evening of his existence sadly in the same corner, which 
he hardly ever quitted. One day came a step like that 
of his lost master, and he suddenly left his place. The 
man who had just entered wore ribbed stockings; the old 
dog had lost his scent and referred at once to the stockings 
that he remembered rubbing his face against them. Be- 
lieving that his master had returned after those weary 
years of absence, he gave way to the most extravagant 
delight The man spoke, the momentary illusion was 



24 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

dispelled, the dog went sadly back to his place, lay 
wearily down, and died. 

These little anecdotes, and there are many such, give 
us glimpses of what is permanent in the canine heart. We 
think that dogs are demonstrative, but they have regrets 
of which they tell us nothing. It is likely that the old 
blind dog, coiled up in his corner day and night, mourn- 
fully cherished the recollection of his lost master, thinking 
of him when the people in the house little suspected those 
yearnings of melancholy retrospect. There is nothing in 
nature so sad as that obscure despair. The dog is high 
enough in the scale of being to feel the regrets of absence 
in all their bitterness, yet not high enough to have his 
anxieties relieved by any word of explanation. Whether 
his master has gone to the next country, or across the 
sea, or to Heaven, he has no possible means of ascertain- 
ing — he only feels the long sorrow of separation, the 
aching of the solitary heart, the weariness of hope defer- 
red, the anxiety that is never set at rest. 

So great is their power of loving that we cannot help 
assigning to dogs — not formally, but in our inward esti- 
mates — a place distinct from the brute creation generally. 
They are not mere animals, like sheep and oxen, that may 
be slaughtered as a matter of ordinary business without 
awakening regret. To kill a dog is always felt to be a 
sort of murder ; it is the destruction of a beautiful though 
not immortal spirit, and the destruction is the more 
lamentable for its very completeness. When I was a boy 
I remember crossing a stream in Lancashire just as a 



DOGS. 25 

workman came to the same place followed by a sharp- 
looking little brown terrier dog. It went snuffing about 
under the roots as such little dogs will, and then the man 
whistled and it came to him at full speed. He caressed it, 
spoke to it very kindly but very sadly, and then began 
to tie a great stone to its neck. * What are you doing that 
for ?' I asked. ' Because I cannot afford to pay the dog- 
tax, and nobody else shall have my little Jip.' Then he 
threw it into the stream. The water was not deep, and it 
was perfectly clear, so that we saw the painful struggles 
of the poor little terrier till it became insensible, and we 
were both fixed to the spot by a sort of fascination. At 
last the man turned away with a pale hard face, suffering, 
in that moment, more than he cared to show, and I went 
my way carrying with me an impression which is even 
now as strong as ever it was. I felt that what I had wit- 
nessed was a murder. Many years after, I shot a dog of 
my own (a magnificent blood-hound mastiff) because he 
was an irreclaimable sheep-killer ; but the revolver I did 
it with instantly became so hateful that I could not bear 
the sight of it, and never fired it afterwards. Even now, 
if he could but be raised from the dead, how gladly would 
I welcome him, how securely would I rely for perfect 
forgiveness on his noble canine magnanimity ! No, these 
creatures are not common brutes, they are our most 
trusting friends, and we cannot take away their lives 
without a treacherous betrayal of that trust. 

A word came under my pen just now by accident 
which belongs quite peculiarly to the canine nature. It 



:5 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

does not belong to all dogs; there are little breeis which 
seem to be almost destitute of it, but all the nobler breeds 
are magnanimous. As we are told to go to the ant to 
learn industry, so we may go to the dog for an example 
of magnanimity. The finest touches of it in his nature are 
not so much in the absolute insensibility to offence as in his 
courteous willingness to attribute offences which he cannot 
possibly overlook to some pardonable mistake of yours, 
or blameable error of his own. Even when most severely 
punished he never seems to doubt the justice of the 
punishment, but takes it in the finest possible temper, as 
a perfect Christian would take chastisement at the hand 
of God. And pray observe that with all this submissive- 
ness, with all this readiness to forget your severity and to 
bask in the first gleam of the sunshine of your clemency, 
there is not the faintest trace of snobbishness in his nature. 
The dog is faithful to his master even when he gets hardly 
anything out of him. It is said that every dog is an 
aristocrat, because rich men's dogs cannot endure beggars 
and their rags, and are civil only to well-dressed visitors. 
But the truth is that, from sympathy for his master, the 
dog always sees humanity very much from his master's 
point of view. The poor man's dog does not dislike the 
poor. I may go much farther than this, and venture to 
assert that a dog who has lived ith you for years will 
make the same distinction between your visitors that you 
make yourself, inwardly, notwithstanding the apparent 
uniformity of your outward politeness. My dog is very 
civil to people I like, but he is savage to those I dislike, 



DOGS. 27 



whatever the tailor may have done to lend them external 
charms. I know not how he discovers these differences 
in my feelings, except it be by overhearing remarks when 
the guests are gone. 

How much do dogs really understand of our language ? 
Perhaps a good deal more than we generally imagine. 
Please observe that in learning a foreign tongue you 
arrive at a certain stage where most of what the foreign 
people say is broadly intelligible to you, and yet you 
cannot express yourself at all. Very young children 
understand a great deal before they are able to express 
themselves in words. Even horses, — and horses are 
incomparably less intelligent than dogs, — understand a 
complete vocabulary of orders. May not a dog of ability 
enter, to some extent, into the meaning of spoken lan- 
guage even though he may never be able to use it? 
Without giving the reins to imagination, it may be pre- 
sumed that some dogs know at laast the names of dif- 
ferent people, and may take note of the manner, cordial 
or otherwise, in which we pronounce them. Whatever 
they may know of spoken language, it is quite clear that 
they understand the language of manner, and have a very 
delicate appreciation of human behaviour. 

Besides the love which the dog has for his master, and 
for him alone, he has his friendships and acquaintances 
with humanity. And as a married man may quite inno- 
cently establish friendships with ladies whom he likes and 
respects, so the most faithful of dogs may have kindly 
feelings for men who stand in no nearer relation to him 



tS CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

than that of acquaintance. All my friends' dogs are 
polite acquaintances of mine, and conduct themselves 
with becoming courtesy. One fat lady is the happy owner 
of the tiniest creature that ever aspired to the dignity of 
dog-hood, and as our acquaintance seemed to have rip- 
ened into an intimacy, I invited Bellona (for such was 
her warlike name) to share with me the perilous pleasures 
of a canoe-voyage. This, however, was presuming too 
far, and at the first landing she deserted the ship and fled 
homewards, like a frightened rabbit, across the fields. 
There are limits to the liaisons. On the other hand, I 
once invited a friend's dog to accompany me on an eques- 
trian excursion, and he followed my horse for eighty 
miles, enjoying the change of scene and the meals we 
shared together. It has also happened to me, to send a 
formal written invitation to a friend's dog to come and 
stay with me for a fortnight. He accepted the invitation, 
came by railway, and behaved himself in the most charm- 
ing manner, renewing our ancient friendship with the 
most amicable demonstrations. It is needless to add that 
he was received with all the honour that the laws of hos- 
pitality exact. Sometimes a dog will forget a mere friend, 
though he never forgets his master. I remember crossing 
a public square in winter, at midnight, and seeing a poor 
lost dog that I recognised as an old acquaintance. There 
could be no mistake about it, she had every physical 
mark and sign of the gentle little creature that I knew, 
the only cause of doubt was that she could not be induced 
to give the slightest, — no, not the very slightest, sign of 



DOGS. 29 



recognition. I caught her and carried he/ in my arms to 
the hotel, held her up to the light, examined every mark 
• — the body was all there, but where was the friendly 
heart that used to beat with gladness when we met, far in 
the quiet country, in the lanes and fields about her home? 
I put her down, and she immediately escaped and was 
lost again in the windings of the streets. The next morn- 
ing I went early to the farm she lived at and inquired if 
she were lost. Yes, it was true, she had been lost in the 
confusion of the fair. Later she found her own way 
back again and behaved to me as amiably as ever. Pro- 
bably, in the town, the sight of so many people had 
bewildered her till she could not recognise a friend, but a 
dog knows his master everywhere. 

One of my dog-friends knew me, however, and behaved 
well to me under very trying circumstances indeed, for he 
was suffering from hydrophobia. I was perfectly aware 
myself of the terrible nature of his ailment, but he came 
to me, and put his head between my knees, like a sick 
child, and I caressed it out of very profound pity. When 
the paroxysms became violent as the disease advanced, 
the dog still controlled himself, and his master took him 
in his arms and carried the poor beast up into a vacant 
garret and locked the door. Then he made a hole in the 
thin brick partition, and with a small rifle, of the kind 
used for rook-shooting, put an end to an existence that 
had become intolerable. Of all the ills that flesh is heir 
to there is not one so terrible as this mysterious madness. 
Every year human victims perish in its unutterable 



30 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

agony. Scarcely less terrible than the disease itself is the 
awful apprehension of it for weeks and months after the 
poisonous bite. A young man died last year within a 
little distance of my home, and the dog that killed him 
had bitten three other persons, who from that time till 
now have been expecting the fearful symptoms. Think 
what it must be to pass month after month with the hor- 
rible suggestion incessantly recurring, 'Am I to go mad 
to-morrow ?' Even these fears do not deter heroic natures 
from the performance of what they consider to be their 
duty. A French boy, in a locality well known to me, 
was taking his little sister to school. In the narrow path 
they met a dog, and the dog was raging mad. It bit the 
boy, but he seized it by the collar and held it, calling to 
his sister to escape. The girl escaped, the boy died of 
hydrophobia. A similar case occurred at another spot I 
know, where a wolf attacked a man and a woman. The wolf 
happened to be suffering from hydrophobia, and bit the 
man, who died. The woman escaped by getting into a 
tree. A healthy wolf may be an unpleasant animal to 
meet in forest-paths, but a mad one is much worse. A 
friend of mine witnessed a terrible encounter between a 
blacksmith and a mad dog. A whole village was in con- 
sternation on account of a great dog that was rushing 
about in a state of very advanced hydrophobia, when the 
blacksmith went forth armed with a large hammer and 
nothing else, to meet the common enemy. He walked 
in the middle of the village street, when at length the 
beast came, going on in a straight line. The first hammer- 



DOGS. 31 



blow missed its aim, the hammer swung clear, but the dog 
stopped, and it seemed as if the dreaded poisonous bite 
was not to be avoided ; however, the smith recovered his 
position rapidly enough to deliver a second blow, this 
time fatal, before the animal touched him. He had shown 
great courage whilst the danger lasted, but as soon as it 
was over he fainted. 

Let us change the subject, and quit this horrible 
topic, hydrophobia, with its hopeless and unimaginable 
miseries. In all the grim catalogue of diseases surely 
this is the most awful ! Nothing more clearly proves 
the necessity of dogs to men, or the strength of the love 
we bear to these poor creatures, than our persistence in 
keeping so near to us the source of so frightful a calamity. 
Every year the newspapers tell us the same tale of its 
victims ; how they were bitten ; how the madness broke 
forth at last and led them to the inevitable agony. We 
cannot realise those sufferings ; we cannot by any effort 
of sympathy or imagination bring ourselves to under- 
stand what flowing water, to us so sweet a refreshment, 
may be to an organisation revolutionised by irresistible 
disease. We only know the reality of the suffering, though 
its nature and origin are mysteries. 



3* 



CHAPTER III. 

DOGS (continued). 

WOULD that dogs could communicate their health and 
energy to us, as they can their fearful malady ! They 
possess in a much higher degree than man, the power of 
storing up energy in times of repose, and keeping it for 
future use. A dog spends his spare time in absolute rest, 
and is able to endure great drains of energy on due 
occasion. He lies idly by the fire, and looks so lazy, 
that it seems as if nothing could make him stir, yet at a 
sign from his master he will get up and go anywhere, 
without hesitation about the distance. In old age dogs 
know that they have not any longer these great reserves 
of force, and decline to follow their masters who go out 
on horseback, but will still gladly follow them on any 
merely pedestrian excursion, well knowing the narrow 
limits of human strength and endurance. Dogs in the 
prime of life accomplish immense distances, not without 
fatigue, for these efforts exhaust them for the moment, 
but they have such great recuperative power that they 
entirely recover by rest. I know a very small dog that 



DOGS. 33 



was given by his master to a friend who lived sixty miles 
off. His new proprietor carried him in the inside of a 
coach ; but the next morning the little animal was in his 
old home again, having found his way across country, 
and a most fatiguing and bewildering country too, 
covered with dense forests and steep hills. Has the 
reader ever observed how much swifter dogs are than 
their behaviour would lead one to imagine ? Here is an 
illustration of what I mean. I know a very rapid coach 
which is always preceded by a middling-sized dog of no 
particular breed. Well, this dog amuses itself within a 
yard of the horses' hoofs, turning round, leaping, looking 
at other vehicles, snapping at other dogs, barking at its 
own and other horses, and leading, in a word, exactly 
the same kind of life as if it were amusing itself in the 
inn-yard before starting. Now, consider a little the 
amazing perfection of organisation, the readiness and 
firmness of nerve, required for motions so complicated as 
these, and the bodily energy, too, necessary to keep 
them up, not for a few yards, but mile after mile as the 
coach rattles along the road ! One false step, one second 
of delay, and the dog would be under the hoofs of the 
horses, yet he plays as children play on the sea-shore 
before the slowly-advancing tide. With the dog's energy, 
and a wiser economy of it, a man could run a hundred 
miles without an interval of rest. 

We make use of the delicate faculty of scent possessed 
by these animals to aid us in the chase, and are so accus- 
tomed to rely upon it that its marvellousness escapes 



34 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

attention. But we have no physical faculty so exquisite 
as this. It is clear that the dog's opinions about odours 
must be widely different from ours, for he endures very 
strong smells which to us are simply intolerable, and 
positively enjoys what we abominate ; but as for true 
delicacy of nerve, which I take to be the power of de- 
tecting what is most faint, we cannot presume to the 
least comparison with him. Every one who has gathered 
wild plants knows what an immense variety of odours 
arise from the plants upon the ground — this is the first 
complication ; next upon that (though we cannot detect 
it) are traced in all directions different lines of scent laid 
down by the passage of animals and men — this is the 
second complication. Well, across these labyrinths of 
misleading or disturbing odours the dog follows the one 
scent he cares for at the time (notwithstanding its inces- 
sant alteration by mixture) as easily as we should follow 
a scarlet thread on a green field. If he were only sensi- 
tive to the one scent he followed, the marvel would be 
much reduced, but he knows many different odours, and 
selects amongst them the one that interests him at the 
time. The only human faculty comparable to this is the 
perception of delicate tints by the most accomplished 
and gifted painters, but here I believe that the intel- 
lectual powers of man do much in the education of the 
eye. No young child could ever colour, though its eye 
were physically perfect, and colouring power comes only 
through study, which is always more or less a definitely 
mental operation. The dog can hardly be said to study 



DOGS. 35 



scents, though long practice through unnumbered genera- 
tions may have given refinement and precision to his 
faculty. 

In speaking of a power of this kind, possessed by 
another animal, we are liable to mistakes which proceed 
from our constant reference to our own human percep- 
tions. We think, for instance, that the odour of thyme 
is strong, whilst for us the scent left by an animal in its 
passage may be so faint as to be imperceptible; but 
scents that are strong for us may be faint for dogs, and 
vice versa. Odours are not positive but relative, they 
are sensations simply, and the same cause does not 
produce the same sensation in different organisms. A 
dog rolls himself on carrion, and unreflecting people 
think this a proof of a disgustingly bad taste on his 
part; but it is evident that the carrion gives him a 
sensation entirely different from that which it produces 
in ourselves. I know a man who says that to him the 
odour of any cheese whatever, even the freshest and 
soundest, is disgusting beyond the power of language 
to express; is it not evident that cheese produces in 
him a sensation altogether different from what it causes 
in most of us ? The smell and taste of dogs may be 
not the less refined and delicate that they differ widely 
from our own. The cause of the most horrible of all 
smells in my own experience is a mouse, but the same 
cause produces, it is probable, an effect altogether dif- 
ferent upon the olfactory nerves of cats. These mys- 
teries of sensation, in other beings, are quite unfathom- 



36 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

able, and our human theories about delicacy of taste 
are not worth a moment's attention. The dog is quite 
as good an authority on these questions as the best of 
us. 

I cannot think that it is very surprising that dogs 
should remember odours well, since odours so long retain 
the power of awakening old associations in ourselves. 
I distinctly remember the odour of every house that was 
familiar to me in boyhood, and should recognise it at 
once. In the same way dogs know the scent of a well- 
known footstep, even after long separation. An officer 
returned home after the Franco-German war and did 
not meet his dog. After his arrival he watched for the 
dog through the window. He saw it at last in a state 
of intense excitement, following his track at full speed, 
never raising its nostrils from the ground, and then came 
the joyful meeting — the scent had been recognised from 
the beginning, even in a much-frequented street 

Innumerable anecdotes might be collected to illus- 
trate the reasoning power of dogs. A certain lawyer, 
a neighbour of mine, has a dog that guards his money 
when clients come into the office. There are two or 
three pieces of furniture, and sometimes it happens that 
the lawyer puts money into one or another of these, 
temporarily, the dog always watching him, and guard- 
ing that particular piece of furniture where the money 
lies. In this instance the dog had gradually become 
aware, from his master's manner, that money was an 
object of more than ordinary solicitude; in fact, he had 



DOGS. 17 



been set to guard coin left upon the table. I refrain 
from repeating current stories about the sagacity of 
dogs, because, although many of them are perfectly cre- 
dible, they are naturally exaggerated in transmission. 
I happened to be in a railway carriage where several 
sportsmen were telling marvellous stories about their 
dogs, whilst an elderly man sat in his corner and said 
nothing. At last he spoke: 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'all 
this is very remarkable, but I have a dog who is still 
more wonderful than the most wonderful of yours. For 
example, you see that river; well, if I were to throw a 
sovereign into that river, my dog would immediately 
plunge in and bring me the change in silver* 'Really, 
sir, you surprise me ! ' said one of the sportsmen, not 
quick enough to see the intended sarcasm. Auguste 
Villemot used to tell a story with a like intention about 
a blind man's dog in Paris, which, after receiving money 
for its master, continued the business after his death, 
and accumulated a considerable fortune. 

Let me add a few words about the treatment of these 
faithful friends of ours. I need scarcely protest against 
the ignorant and stupid mutilation of dogs by cutting 
their ears and tail. From the artistic point of view this 
is barbarous in the last degree, because it spoils their 
instruments of expression. It is like cutting out the 
tongue of a human being. There is a poor dog near me 
whose tail has been amputated at the very root, and the 
consequence is that he cannot tell me the half of what he 
thinks. Sir Edwin Landseer was greatly pleased to meet 



38 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

with a dog-seller who would not mutilate his animals, for 
the reason that ■ Sir Edwin Landseer did not approve of 
it.' In a smaller way every one of us may exercise the 
same merciful influence, and I earnestly request every 
reader of these lines to discourage openly the mutilation 
of dogs and other animals. It is an evil very generally 
prevalent and of very long standing, and it is due to the 
desire for improving nature, for turning natural things as 
far as possible into artificial things, which is instinctive in 
mankind and leads to the most useful results ; but this 
is one of its false directions. People who are only par- 
tially civilised do not see where they ought to respect 
nature, and where to make alterations ; so they cannot 
leave anything alone. The highest civilisation does little 
more than remove impediments to perfect natural growth, 
and accepts the divine ideals as the ideals towards which 
it strives. The best practical way to prevent people from 
mutilating dogs is, not to reason on the subject (for reason 
is far too weak to contend against custom), but to employ 
ridicule. I make it a rule to tell everybody who keeps a 
mutilated dog, that his dog is both ugly and absurd ; and 
if a good many people hear me, so much the better. 
There is another very common sort of cruelty to dogs, 
which might easily be prevented by the exercise of a 
little common sense. Many dog-owners, especially kind- 
hearted but weak-minded ladies, are accustomed to injure 
their pets by giving them too much food and too little 
exercise. Pampered dogs are certainly not the happiest 
dogs. Only look at them ! Can a creature which was 



DOGS. 39 



intended by nature for the most exuberant activity be 
said to enjoy life when it can hardly waddle across a 
carpet ? There is not an honest doctor who, after examin- 
ing the teeth and breath, and observing the digestion of 
these wretched martyrs to mistaken kindness, will not 
tell you that they have no genuine health, and without 
that neither dog nor man can be happy. If you really 
care about making your dog happy, the way to do so is 
both extremely simple and perfectly well known. Feed 
him regularly and moderately, see that his bodily func- 
tions go as they ought to do, and vary his diet when 
necessary. Above all, give him plenty of exercise, take 
him out with you into the fields and woods — that is what 
he most enjoys. Keep him under a strict and wholesome 
discipline, for dogs are happiest, as men are, when wisely 
and steadily governed. Our caresses ought to be 
reserved as a reward, or a recognition, not given conti- 
nually till the dog is weary of them. In the same way, 
besides the regular food, we may give occasionally little 
morsels out of kindness, because he values the kindness, 
just as we like a cigar that a friend gives us out of his 
own case. His happiness, like our own, is best promoted 
by activity, by temperance, by obedience to duty, and 
by the sort of affection that is not incompatible with 
perfect dignity, of which every noble dog has his full 
share. 

But however healthy and happy a dog may be, there 
comes a time at last when the gladness fades out of his 
life. I see with sorrow that my poor old Tom feels 



40 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

obliged to decline to follow me now when I go out on 
horseback. This is one of the first symptoms of old age, 
and he does not hear so well or see so well as formerly. 
Still, on a bright morning, when we go out in the woods 
together, he is quite himself again, apparently, and the 
old activity revives. It is that last renewal of summer 
which precedes the frosts of autumn, that after-glow in 
the western sky which is so swiftly followed by the leaden 
greys of night. One of my neighbours has an old dog 
that can neither hear nor see, and passes the dark, silent 
days in an arm-chair which has been given to him for 
the comfort of his age. One sound is audible by him 
still, and one only — a little shrill silver whistle that he 
has obeyed from puppyhood till now. It is one of the 
most pathetic, sights I ever witnessed, when the master 
comes and sounds the piercing call. The inert thing in 
the arm-chair becomes galvanised with sudden life, 
tumbles down upon the floor, crawls towards the sound, 
finds the beloved hand, and licks it. They pass whole 
evenings together still, that gentle master and his poor old 
friend. And still in that dark decrepitude beats the 
heart of inextinguishable love. 

It happens very fortunately for modern art, that dogs 
have not only the interest of character and intelligence, 
which is what the general public cares most about, but also 
a rich variety of form and colour and texture, abounding 
in striking contrasts, delighting the eye of the artist whilst 
he is at work, and permitting him to make good pictures. 
Although dogs have been more or less painted and 



DOGS, 41 



carved since men used brush and chisel, they have never 
held so important a position in art as they do now. The 
modern love of incident in pictures, the modern delight 
in what has been aptly called ' literary interest ' as 
distinguished from the pure pleasure of the eyes, naturally 
induce us to give a very high place to dogs, which more 
than all other animals are capable of awakening an 
interest of this kind. The dog is so close to man, so 
intimately associated with his life, both in the field and 
in the house, that he becomes a sharer in many of its 
incidents, and the painter scarcely needs a pretext for 
introducing him. In such a picture, for example, as the 
' Order of Release ' (by Millais), the dog has his due 
importance as a member of the family, and the painter 
does not ignore the canine gladness and affection. And 
so in the illustration, by the same artist, of that charming 
old Scottish song, ' There is nae luck about the house/ 
the dog is first out of doors to go and meet the gudeman. 
In Landseer's ' Shepherd's Chief Mourner ' the dog is 
alone in his lamentation, and yet we feel that the bereav- 
ed creature is in the place that is his by a natural right, 
by right of long service, of constant companionship, of 
humble faithful friendship and deep love. You paint a 
portrait of Sir Walter Scott, why not introduce Maida ? 
— of young Lord Byron, why not put brave Boatswain 
by his side ? These creatures rejoice with us in our sports 
and at our festivals, and they mourn for us in the hour of 
that separation which religion and science agree to 
consider eternal. We, too, mourn for them, when they 

G 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



leave us, and pass from the fulness of life into the abyss 
of nothingness. There may be human relatives for whom 
you will wear funereal hatbands, for whom you will 
blacken the borders of envelopes and cards, and who, 
nevertheless, will not be regretted with that genuine 
sorrow that the death of a dog will bring. Many a tear 
is shed every year in England for the loss of these humble 
friends, and many a heart has been relieved by the 
welcome tidings, * There's life in the old dog yet' 



43 



CHAPTER IV. 

CATS. 

One evening before dinner-time the present writer had 
occasion to go into a dining-room where the cloth was 
already laid, the glasses all in their places on the side- 
board and table, and the lamp and candles lighted. A 
cat, which was a favourite in the house, finding the door 
ajar, entered softly after me, and began to make a little 
exploration after his manner. I have a fancy for watching 
animals when they think they are not observed, so I 
affected to be entirely absorbed in the occupation which 
detained me there, but took note of the cat's proceedings 
without in any way interrupting them. The first thing 
he did was to jump upon a chair, and thence upon the 
sideboard. There was a good deal of glass and plate 
upon that piece of furniture, but nothing as yet which, in 
the cat's opinion, was worth purloining : so he brought 
all his paws together on the very edge of the board, the 
two forepaws in the middle, the others on both sides, and 
sat balancing himself in that attitude for a minute or two, 
whilst he contemplated the long glittering vista of the 



44 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

table. As yet there was not an atom of anything eatable 
upon it, but the cat probably thought he might as well 
ascertain whether this were so or not by a closer inspec- 
tion, for with a single spring he cleared the abyss and 
alighted noiselessly on the table-cloth. He walked all 
over it and left no trace ; he passed amongst the slender 
glasses, fragile-stemmed, like air-bubbles cut in half and 
balanced on spears of ice; yet he disturbed nothing, 
broke nothing, anywhere. When his inspection was over 
he slipped out of sight, having been perfectly inaudible 
from the beginning, so that a blind person could only 
have suspected his visit by that mysterious sense which 
makes the blind aware of the presence of another creature. 

This little scene reveals one remarkable characteristic 
of the feline nature, the innate and exquisite refinement 
of its behaviour. It would be infinitely difficult, probably 
even impossible, to communicate a delicacy of this kind 
to any animal by teaching. The cat is a creature of most 
refined and subtle perceptions naturally. Why should she 
tread so carefully ? It is not from fear of offending her 
master and incurring punishment, but because to do so is 
in conformity with her own ideal of behaviour; exactly as 
a lady would feel vexed with herself if she broke any- 
thing in her own drawing-room, though no one would 
blame her maladresse and she would never feel the loss. 

The contrast in this respect between cats and other 
animals is very striking. I will not wrong the noble 
canine nature so far as to say that it has no delicacy, but 
its delicacy is not of this kind, not in actual touch, as the 



CATS. 45 

cat's is. The motions of the cat, being always governed 
by the most refined sense of touch in the animal world, 
are typical in quite a perfect way of what we call tact in 
the human world. And as a man who has tact exercises 
it on all occasions for his own satisfaction, even when 
there is no positive need for it, so a cat will walk daintily 
and observantly everywhere, whether amongst thr. 
glasses on a dinner-table or the rubbish in a farm-yard. 

It is easy to detract from the admirableness of this 
delicate quality in the cat by a reference to the necessi- 
ties of her life in a wild state. Any one not much dis- 
posed to enter into imaginative sentimentalities about 
animals might say to us, ' What you admire so much as 
a proof of ladylike civilisation in the cat, is rather an 
evidence that she has retained her savage habits. When 
she so carefully avoids the glasses on the dinner-table 
she is not thinking of her behaviour as a dependent on 
civilised man, but acting in obedience to hereditary 
habits of caution in the stealthy chase, which is the 
natural accomplishment of her species. She will stir no 
branch of a shrub lest her fated bird escape her, and her 
feet are noiseless that the mouse may not know of her 
coming.' This, no doubt, would be a probable account 
of the origin of that fineness of touch and movement 
which belongs to cats, but the fact of that fineness re- 
mains. In all the domestic animals, and in man himself, 
there are instincts and qualities still more or less distinctly 
traceable to a savage state, and these qualities are often 
the very basis of civilisation itself. That which in the 



46 CHAPTERS ON JNIMJLS. 

wild cat is but the stealthy cunning of the hunter, is 
refined in the tame one into a habitual gentleness often 
very agreeable to ladies, who dislike the boisterous de- 
monstrations of the dog and his incorrigible carelessness. 

This quality of extreme caution, which makes the cat 
avoid obstacles that a dog would dash through without a 
thought, makes her at the same time somewhat reserved 
and suspicious in all the relations of her life. If a cat has 
been allowed to run half- wild this suspicion can never be 
overcome. There was a numerous population of cats in 
this half-wild state for some years in the garrets of my 
house. Some of these were exceedingly fine, handsome 
animals, and I very much wished to get them into the 
rooms we inhabited, and so domesticate them ; but all my 
blandishments were useless. The nearest approach to 
success was in the case of a superb white-and-black ani- 
mal, who, at last, would come to me occasionally, and 
permit me to caress his head, because I scratched him 
behind the ears. Encouraged by this measure of confi- 
dence, I went so far on one occasion as to lift him a few 
inches from the ground : on which he behaved himself 
very much like a wild cat just trapped in the woods, and 
for some days after it was impossible even to get near 
him. He never came down-stairs in a regular way, but 
communicated with the outer world by means of roofs 
and trees, like the other untameable creatures in the gar- 
rets. On returning home after an absence I sought him 
vainly, and have never encountered him since. 

This individual lived on the confines of civilisation, 



CATS. 47 

and it is possible that his tendency to friendliness might 
have been developed into a feeling more completely 
trustful by greater delicacy and care. I happened to 
mention him to an hotel-keeper who was unusually fond 
of animals, and unusually successful in winning their 
affections. He told me that his own cats were remarkable 
for their uncommon tameness, being very much petted 
and caressed, and constantly in the habit of seeing num- 
bers of people who came to the hotel, and he advised me 
to try a kitten of his breed. This kitten, from hereditary 
civilisation, behaved with the utmost confidence from the 
beginning, and, with the exception of occasional absences 
for his own purposes, has lived with me regularly enough. 
In winter he generally sleeps upon my dog, who submits 
in patience ; and I have often found him on horseback in 
the stable, not from any taste for equestrianism, but sim- 
ply because a horse-cloth is a perpetual warmer when 
there is a living horse beneath it. 

All who have written upon cats are unanimous in the 
opinion that their caressing ways bear reference simply 
to themselves. My cat loves the dog and horse exactly 
with the tender sentiment we have for foot- warmers and 
railway rugs during a journey in the depth of winter, nor 
have I ever been able to detect any worthier feeling 
towards his master. Ladies are often fond oi cats, and 
pleasantly encourage the illusion that they are affectionate; 
it is said too that very intellectual men have often a liking 
for the same animal. In both these cases the attachment 
seems to be due more to certain other qualities of the cat 



48 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

than to any strength of sentiment on his part. Of all 
animals that we can have in a room with us, the cat is 
the least disturbing. Dogs bring so much dirt into houses 
that many ladies have a positive horror of them ; squirrels 
leap about in a manner highly dangerous to the ornaments 
of a drawing-room ; . whilst monkeys are so incorrigibly 
mischievous that it is impossible to tolerate them, not- 
withstanding the nearness of the relationship. But you 
may have a cat in the room with you without anxiety 
about anything except eatables. He will rob a dish if he 
can get at it, but he will not, except by the rarest of acci- 
dents, displace a sheet of paper or upset an inkstand. The 
presence of a cat is positively soothing to a student, as 
the presence of a quiet nurse is soothing to the irritability 
of an invalid. It is agreeable to feel that you are not 
absolutely alone, and it seems to you, as you work, as if 
the cat took care that all her movements should be noise- 
less, purely out of consideration for your comfort. Then, 
if you have time to caress her, you know that there will 
be purring responses, and why inquire too closely into 
the sincerity of her gratitude ? There have been instances 
of people who surrounded themselves with cats ; old maids 
have this fancy sometimes, which is intelligible, because 
old maids delight in having objects on which to lavish 
their inexhaustible kindness, and their love of neatness 
and comfort is in harmony with the neat habits 01 these 
comfort-appreciating creatures. A dog on velvet is evi- 
dently out oi place, he would be as happy on clean straw, 
but a cat on velvet does not awaken any sense of the 



CATS, 49 

incongruous. It is more difficult to understand how men 
of business ever take to cats. A well-known French poli- 
tician, who certainly betrayed nothing feminine in his 
speeches, was so fond of cats that it was impossible to dine 
peaceably at his house on account of four licensed feline 
marauders which promenaded upon the dinner-table, 
helping themselves to everything, and jumping about the 
shoulders of the guests. It may be observed that in Paris 
cats frequently appear upon the table in another shape. I 
once stayed in a house not very far from the great tri- 
umphal arch ; and from my window, at certain hours of 
the day, might be observed a purveyor of dead cats who 
supplied a small cheap restaurant in a back street. I never 
went to eat at the restaurant, but ascertained that it had 
a certain reputation for a dish supposed to be made of 
rabbits. During the great siege, many Parisians who 
may frequently have eaten cat without knowing it (as you 
also may perchance have done, respected reader) came to 
eat cat with clear knowledge of the true nature of the 
feast, and they all seem to agree that it was very good. 
Our prejudices about the flesh we use for food are often 
inconsistent, the most reasonable one seems to be a pre- 
ference for vegetable feeders, yet we eat lobsters and 
pike. The truth is that nobody who eats even duck 
can consistently have a horror of cat's flesh on the 
ground of the animal's habits. And although the 
cat is a carnivorous animal, it has a passionate fond- 
ness for certain vegetable substances, delighting in 
the odour of valerian, and in the taste of asparagus, 

H 



So CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

the former to ecstasy, the latter to downright glut- 
tony. 

Since artists cannot conveniently have lions and tigers 
in their studios, they sometimes like to have cats merely 
that they may watch the ineffable grace of their motions. 
Stealthy and treacherous as they are, they have yet a 
quite peculiar finish of style in action, far surpassing, in 
certain qualities of manner, the mobt perfectly-trained 
action of horses, or even the grace of the roe-deer or the 
gazelle. All other animals are stiff in Comparison with 
the felines, all other animals have distinctly bodies sup- 
ported by legs, reminding one of the primitive toy- 
maker's conception of a quadruped, a cylinder on four 
sticks, with a neck and head at one end and a tail at the 
other. But the cat no more recalls this rude anatomy 
than does a serpent From the tips of his whiskers to 
the extremities of tail and_ claws he is so mucl. living 
india-rubber. One never thinks of muscles and bones 
whilst looking at him {has he anv muscles and bones ?), 
but only of the reserved electric life that lies waiting 
under the softness of the fur. What bursts of energy the 
creature is capable of! I once shut up a half-wild cat in 
a room and he flew about like a frightened bird, or like 
leaves caught in a whirlwind. He dashed against the 
window-panes like sudden hail, ran up the walls like 
arrested water, and flung himself everywhere with such 
rapidity that he filled as much space, and filled it almost 
as dangerously, as twenty flashing swords. And yet this 
incredibly wild energy is in the creature's quiet habits 



CATS. $i 

subdued with an exquisite moderation. The cat always 
uses precisely the necessary force, other animals roughly 
employ what strength they happen to possess without 
reference to the small occasion. One day I watched a 
young cat playing with a daffodil. She sat on her hind- 
legs and patted the flower with her paws, first with one 
paw and then with the other, making the light yellow 
bell sway from side to side, yet not injuring a petal or a 
stamen. She took a delight, evidently, in the very deli- 
cacy of the exercise, whereas a dog or a horse has no 
enjoyment of delicacy in his own movements, but acts 
strongly when he is strong without calculating whether 
the force used may not be in great part superfluous. This 
proportioning of the force to the need is well known to be 
one of the evidences of refined culture, both in manners 
and in the fine arts. If animals could speak as fabulists 
have feigned, the dog would be a blunt, blundering out- 
spoken, honest fellow, but the cat would have the rare 
talent of never saying a word too much. A hint of the 
same character is conveyed by the sheathing of the claws, 
and also by the contractability of the pupil of the eye. 
The hostile claws are invisible, and are not shown when 
they are wanted, yet are ever sharp and ready. The eye 
has a narrow pupil in broad daylight, receiving no more 
sunshine than is agreeable, but it will gradually expand 
as twilight falls, and clear vision needs a larger and larger 
surface. Some of these cat-qualities are very desirable in 
criticism. The claws of a critic ought to be very sharp, 
but not perpetually prominent, and his eye ought to see 



52 CHAF 717.: ON ANIMALS. 

fa: into rather obscure subjects without being dazzled by 
plain cayligy.t. 

It is odd that, notwithstanding the extreme beauty of 
cats, their elegance of motion, the variety and intensity 
of their colour, they should be so little painted by consider- 
able artists. Almost all the pictures of cats which I 
remember were done by inferior men, often by artists of 
a very low grade indeed The reason for this is probably, 
that although the cat is a refined and very voluptuous 
animal, it is so wanting in the nobler qualities as to fail 
in winning the serious sympathies of noble and generous- 
hearted men. M. Manet once very appropriately in- 
troduced a black cat on the bed of a Parisian lorette, and 
this cat became quite famous for a week or two in all the 
Parisian newspapers, being also cleverly copied by the 
caricaturists. No other painted cat ever attracted so 
much attention, indeed ■ Le chat de M. Manet ' amused 
Paris as Athens amused itself with the dog of Alcibiades. 

M. Manet's cat had an awful look, and depths of 
meaning were discoverable in its eyes of yellow flame set 
in the blackness of the night There has always been a 
feeling that a black cat was not altogether 'canny.' 
Many of us, if we were quite sincere, would confess to a 
superstition about black cats. They seem to know too 
much, and is it not written that their ancestors were the 
companions and accomplices of witches in the times of 
old ? Who can tell what baleful secrets may not have 
been transmitted through their generations - There can 
be no doubt that cats know a great deal more than they 



CATS. 53 

choose to tell us, though occasionally they may let a 
secret out in some unguarded moment. Shelley the poet, 
who had an intense sense of the supernatural, narrates 
the following history, as he heard it from Mr. G. Lewis: — 

1 A gentleman on a visit t"> a friend who lived on the skirts of an 
extensive forest on the east of Germany lost his way. He wandered 
for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. 
On approaching it, he was surprised to observe that it proceeded 
from the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked, he 
thought it prudent to look through the window. He saw a multi- 
tude of cats assembled round a small grave, four of whom were 
letting down a coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman, startled 
at this unusual sight, and imagining that he had arrived among the 
re treats of fiends or witches, mounted his horse and rode away 
with the rtmost precipitation. 2E[e arrived at his friend's house at 
a iaie hour, who nad sat up for him. On his arrival, his friend 
qpestioned as to the cause of the traces of trouble visible on his 
face. TJ Te began to recount his adventure, after much difficulty, 
knowing that it was scarcely possible that his fiends should give 
faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the coffin with 
a crown upon it, than his friend's cat, who seemed to have been 
lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying, " Then I am the 
King of the Cats 1" and scrambled up the chimney and was seen 
no more.' 

Now, is not that a remarkable story, proving, at the 
same time, the attention cats pay to human conversation 
even when they outwardly seem perfectly indifferent to 
it, and the monarchical character of their political organ- 
isation, which without this incident might have remained 
for ever unknown to us ? This happened, we are told, in 
eastern Germany ; but in our own island, less than a 



54 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

hundred years ago, there remained at least one cat fit to 
be the ministrant of a sorceress. When Sir Walter Scott 
visited the Black Dwarf, * Bowed Davie Ritchie/ the 
Dwarf said, ' Man, hae ye ony podr ? ' meaning power of a 
supernatural kind, and he added solemnly, pointing to a 
large black cat whose fiery eyes shone in a dark corner 
of the cottage, ' He has poor / ' In Scott's place any 
imaginative person would have more than half believed 
Davie, as indeed did his illustrious visitor. The ancient 
Egyptians, who knew as much about magic as the wisest 
of the moderns, certainly believed that the cat had poo'r, 
or they would not have mummified him with such pains- 
taking conscientiousness It may easily be imagined, 
that in times when science did not exist a creature, whose 
fur emitted lightnings when anybody rubbed it in the 
dark, must nave inspired great awe, and there is really 
an air of mystery about cats which considerably exercises 
the imagination. This impression would be intensified 
in the case of people born with a physical antipathy to 
cats, and there are such persons. A Captain Logan, of 
Knockshinnock in Ayrshire, is mentioned in one of the 
early numbers of Chambers' Journal as having this anti- 
pathy in the strongest form. He simply could not 
endure the sight of cat or kitten, and though a tall, strong 
man, would do anything to escape from the objects of his 
instinctive and uncontrollable horror, climbing upon 
chairs if a cat entered the room, and not daring to come 
down till the creature was removed from his presence. 
These mysterious repugnances are outside the domain of 



CATS. 55 

reason. Many people, not without courage, are seized 
with involuntary shudderings when they see a snake or a 
toad ; others could not bring themselves to touch a rat, 
though the rat is one of the cleanliest of animals — not, 
certainly, as to his food, but his person. It may be 
presumed that one Mrs. Griggs, who lived, I believe, in 
Edinburgh, did not share Captain Logan's antipathy, for 
she kept in her house no less than eighty-six living cats, 
and had, besides, twenty-eight dead ones in glass cases, 
immortalised by the art of the taxidermist. If it is true, 
and it certainly is so in a great measure, that those who 
love most know most, then Mrs. Griggs would have been, 
a much more competent person to write on cats than the 
colder-minded author of these chapters. It is wonderful 
to think how much that good lady must have known of 
the lovcablcness of cats, of those recondite qualities which 
may endear them to the human heart ! 

What a difference in knowledge and feeling concerning 
cats between Mrs. Griggs and a gamekeeper ! The game- 
keeper knows a good deal about them too, but it is not 
exactly affection which has given keenness to his observ- 
ation. He does not see a ' dear sweet pet ' in every cat 
that crosses his woodland paths, but the most destructive 
of poachers, the worst of ' vermin.' And there can be no 
doubt that from his point of view the gamekeeper is quite 
right, even as good Mrs. Griggs may have been from 
hers. If cats killed game from hunger only, there would 
be a limit to their depredations, but unfortunately they 
have the instinct of sport, which -sportsmen consider a 



56 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

very admirable quality in themselves, but regard with the 
strongest disapprobation in other animals. Mr. Frank 
Buckland says, that when once a cat has acquired the 
passion for hunting it becomes so strong that it is im- 
possible to break him of it. He knew a cat which had 
been condemned to death, but the owner begged its life 
on condition that it should be shut up every night and 
well fed. The very first night of its incarceration it 
escaped up the chimney, and was found the next morning, 
black with soot, in one of the gamekeeper's traps. The 
keeper easily determines what kind of animal has been 
committing depredations in his absence. ' Every animal 
has his own way of killing and eating his prey. The cat 
always turns the skin inside out, leaving tne same reversed 
like a glove. The weasel and stoat will eat the brain 
and nibble about the head, and suck the blood. The fox 
will always leave the legs and hinder parts of a hare or a 
rabbit ; the dog tears his prey to pieces, and eats it 
" anyhow — all over the place ; " the crows and magpies 
always peck at the eyes before they touch any part of 
the body.' 

' Again,' continues Mr. Frank Buckland, ' let the 
believer in the innocence of Mrs. Puss listen to the crow 
of the startled pheasant ; he will hear him " tree," as the 
keeper calls it, and from his safe perch up in a branch 
again crow as if to summon his protector to his aid. No 
second summons does the keeper want ; he at once runs 
to the spot, and there, stealing with erect ears, glaring 
eyes, and limbs collected together, and at a high state of 



CATS. $7 

tension, ready for the fatal spring, he sees — what ? — the 
cat, of course, caught in the very attitude of premeditated 
poaching.' 

This love of sport might perhaps be turned to account 
if cats were trained as larger felines are trained for the 
princes of India. A fisherman of Portsmouth, called 
' Robinson Crusoe,' made famous by Mr. Buckland, had 
a cat called 'Puddles,' which overcame the horror of 
water characteristic of his race, and employed his pisca- 
torial talents in the service of his master: — 

'He was the wonderful! est water-cat as ever came out of 
Portsmouth Harbor was Puddles, and he used to go out a-tishing 
with me every night. On cold nights he would sit in my lap 
while I was a-iishing and poke his head out every now and then, 
or else I would wrap him up in a sail, and make him lay quiet. 
He'd lay down on me when I was asleep, and if anybody come he'd 
6wear a good one, and have the face oil" ^n 'em if they went to 
touch me ; and he'd never touch a fish, not even a little teeny 
pout, if you did not give it him. I was obligated to take him out 
a-iishing, for else he would stand and youl and marr till I went 
back and catched him by the pol and shied him into the boat, 
and then he was quite happy. When it was fire he used to 
Btick up at the bows of the boat and sit a-watching the dogs 
{i. e. dog-fish). The dogs used to come alongside by thousands at 
a time, and when they was thick all about he would dive in and 
fetch them out, jammed in his mouth as fast as may be, just as if 
they was a parcel of rats, and he did not tremble with the cold 
half as much as a Newfoundland dog ; he was used to it. He 
looked terrible wild about the head when he came up out of the 
water with the dog-fish. I larnt him «he water myself. One day, 
when he was a kitten, I took him down to the sea to wash and 
brush the fleas out of him, and in a week he could swim after a 
feather or a cork.' 

I 



58 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

Of the cat in a state of nature few of us have seen 
very much. The wild cat has become rare in the British 
islands, but the specimens shot occasionally by game- 
keepers are very superior in size and strength to the 
familiar occupant of the hearth-rug. I remember that 
when I lived at Loch Awe, my next neighbour, a keeper 
on the Cladich estate, shot one that quite astonished 
me — a formidable beast indeed, to which the largest 
domestic cat was as an ordinary human being to Chang 
the giant — indeed this comparison is insufficient. Wild 
cats are not usually dangerous to man, for they pru- 
dently avoid him, but if such a creature as that killed 
on Lochaweside were to show fight, an unarmed man 
would find the situation very perilous. I would much 
rather have to fight a wolf. There is a tradition at the 
village of Barnborough, in Yorkshire, that a man and a 
wild cat fought together in a wood near there, and that 
the combat went on till they got to the church-porch, 
when both died from their wounds. It is the marvellous 
agility of the cat which makes him such a terrible enemy; 
to say that he 'flies' at you is scarcely a figure of 
speech. However, the wild cat, when he knows that he 
is observed, generally seeks refuge, as King Charles did 
at Boscobel, in the leafy shelter of some shadowy tree, 
and there the deadly leaden hail too surely follows him, 
and brings him to earth again. 

Cats have the advantage of being very highly con- 
nected, since the king of beasts is their blood-relation, 
and it is certain that a good deal of the interest we take 



CATS, 59 

in them is due to this august relationship. What the 
merlin or the sparrow-hawk is to the golden eagle, the 
cat is to the great felines of the tropics. The difference 
between a domestic cat and a tiger is scarcely wider than 
that which separates a miniature pet dog from a blood- 
hound. It is becoming to the dignity of an African 
prince, like Theodore of Abyssinia, to have lions for his 
household pets. The true grandeur and majesty of a 
brave man are rarely seen in such visible supremacy as 
when he sits surrounded by these terrible creatures, he 
in his fearlessness, they in their awe ; he in his defence- 
less weakness, they with that mighty strength which they 
dare not use against him. One of my friends, distin- 
guished alike in literature and science, but not at all the 
sort of person, apparently, to command respect from 
brutes who cannot estimate intellectual greatness, had 
one day an interesting converation with a lion-tamer, 
which ended in a still more interesting experiment. The 
lion-tamer affirmed that there was no secret in his pro- 
fession, that real courage alone was necessary, and that 
any one who had the genuine gift of courage could 
safely enter the cage along with him. 'For example, 
you yourself, sir/ added the lion-tamer, 'if you have 
the sort of courage I mean, may go into the cage with 
me whenever you like.' On this my friend, who has a 
fine intellectual coolness and unbounded scientific 
curiosity, willingly accepted the offer, and paid a visit to 
their majesties the lions in the privacy of their own 
apartment. They received him with the politeness due 



to CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

to a brave man, and after an agreeable interview of 
several minutes he backed out of the royal presence with 
the gratified feelings of a gentleman who has just been 
presented at court 



6i 



CHAPTER IV. 

HORSES. 

It happened to me one night during the late war in 
France to ride into the court-yard of an inn which was 
full of French artillerymen. In the bustle and hurry of 
the time it was useless to call for the services of an ostler, 
so I set about seeking for stable-room myself. In the 
French country inns there are no stalls, and the only 
division between the horses, when there is any separation 
at all, is a board suspended at one end by an iron hook 
to the manger, and at the other hanging from the roof by 
a knotted cord. In this inn, however, even the hanging- 
board was wanting, and about fifty artillery horses were 
huddled together so closely as almost to touch each other, 
so that it was difficult to find an open space for my mare. 
At last I found an opening near a magnificent black ani- 
mal, which I supposed to be an officer's saddle-horse. 

A fine horse is always an attraction for me, so as soon 
as I had finished such arrangements as were possible for 
the comfort of my own beast, I began to examine her 
neighbour rather minutely. He seemed in perfect health, 



62 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

but at last I discovered a fresh wound on the near fore- 
leg, evidently caused by the fragment of a shell. (There 
had been a battle at the place the day before.) Turning 
to an artilleryman who was standing by, I asked if the 
veterinary surgeon thought he could save the horse. 
' No, sir, he is to be shot to-morrow morning.' This deci- 
sion seemed hard, for the horse stood well, and was eating 
his hay tranquilly. I felt strongly tempted to beg him, 
and see what rest and care could accomplish. 

At midnight I came back for my own mare. There 
was a great and terrible change in her neighbour's con- 
dition. He lay in the straw, half under her, the place was 
so crowded. I shall never forget his piteous cries and 
moans. He could not rise, and the shattered limb was 
causing him cruel pain. His noble head lay at my feet, 
and I stooped to caress it. 

' So this is the reward,' I thought, ' that man gives to 
the best and bravest servant that he has ! A long night 
of intolerable anguish, unrelieved by any attempt what- 
ever to soothe or ease his pain ; in the morning, the de- 
layed charity of a rifle-bullet !' This single instance, which 
moved me because I had seen it, perhaps a little also 
because the animal was beautiful and gentle, what was it, 
after all, in comparison with the incalculable quantity of 
animal suffering which the war was causing in half the 
provinces of France ? These reflections filled me with pain 
and sadness as I rode over the battle-ground in the frosty 
moonlight. The dead horses lay there still, just as they 
fell, and tor them I felt no pity. Swift death, sudden obli- 



HORSES. 6$ 



vion, rest absolute, unconscious, eternal, these are not 
evils ; but the pain of the torn flesh and the shattered 
bone, the long agony in hunger and cold, the anguish of 
the poor maimed brutes, who struggle through the last 
dark passages of existence, without either the pride of the 
soldier, the reason of the philosopher, or the hope of the 
Christian — that is Evil, pure and unmixed ! 

Like all who love animals much, I know and remember 
them as I know and remember men. During the war I 
had acquaintances amongst the officers and soldiers, and 
acquaintances amongst their horses likewise ; and when 
they rode forth to battle I was pretty nearly as anxious 
about the animals as about the brave men who mounted 
them. I remember a Garibaldian sergeant, whose red 
shirt was frequently visible in my court-yard, a youth 
overflowing with life, to whom the excitement of a battle 
from time to time was as necessary as that of a ball is to 
a lively young lady. His way of riding was the nearest 
approach to that of an enraptured bard on Pegasus that 
I ever witnessed amongst the realities of the earth. My 
house is situated something like a tower, with views in 
every direction, and I used to amuse myself with watch- 
ing him from the upper windows when the fit of eques- 
trian inspiration was upon him. The red shirt flew first 
along the high-road, then dashed suddenly down a lane ; 
a little later you could see it flashing scarlet along the 
outskirts of a distant wood ; then, after a brief eclipse, it 
reappeared in the most unexpected places. The lad 
careered in this way simply for his amusement, — -for the 



64 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

pulsation of that wild delight that his fiery nature needed. 
It is a fact that he did not even hold the reins. When these 
mad fits of equestrianism seized him, he flung the bridle 
on his charger's neck, threw his arms high in the air, and 
then made them revolve like the paddle-wheels of a 
steamer. He accompanied these gestures with wild Italian 
cries, and a double stroke of the spurs. No wonder if his 
horse galloped ! And he did gallop. When the rider 
wanted to turn down a lane he simply gave his steed a 
hearty slap on the off-side of the neck, — a hint which 
never seemed to be misunderstood. I have witnessed a 
good deal of remarkable equestrianism, but never any- 
thing like that His horse was one of the ugliest, and 
one of the best, that soldier ever bestrode. I have a faint 
recollection of seeing a child's wooden horse which so 
closely resembled it, that the artist must have had some 
such model in his mind. A great round barrel, that 
seemed as if it had been turned in a lathe, a broad chest, 
straight strong legs, very short proportionally, shoulders 
far forward relatively to the neck, high withers, large ugly 
head, with a good-tempered expression, a stump for a 
tail, and a rough coat of a bay quite closely resembling 
red hair in the human species : such were the various 
beauties of this war-horse. His ugliness and his honest 
looks gave me a sort of attachment to him ; and his 
rider loved him dearly, and was loud in his praise. At 
length the regiment was ordered to Digon, and severely 
engaged there in the Battle of Piques. Afterwards I saw 
the sergeant's red shirt again, but he rode no longer that 



HORSES. 65 



good animal. The poor thing had had three, of its four 
legs carried away by a cannon-ball ; but its master, though 
in the heat of the battle, humanely ended its misery with 
his revolver. 

These things, of course, are the every- day accidents of 
war, in which horses are killed by thousands ; but when 
particular instances come under your observation, they 
pain you, if you really love animals. I heartily wish that 
horses could be dispensed with in war, and some sort of 
steam-engine used instead, if it were possible. In the 
orders given by Louis- Napoleon at the opening of the 
campaign of 1870, one detail seemed to me unnecessarily 
cruel. Orderlies were told not to hesitate to ride their 
horses to death {de crever leurs montures). It is certainly 
necessary on occasion, when the fate of thousands de- 
pends upon the speed of an animal, to avail ourselves of 
that noble quality by which it will give its last breath in 
devoted obedience; but soldiers are not generally so 
tender that they need to be encouraged in indiscriminate 
mercilessness. That glorious poem of Browning's would 
be intolerable to our humanity, were it not for the sweet 
touches of mercy at the end : — 
'By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, "Stay spur I 
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 
We'll remember at Aix"— -for one heard the quick wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees, 
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 1 * 

* For intense power of literary workmanship I know nothing in any 
language, that goes beyond those four lines. 

J 



66 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

So we were left galloping, Joris and I, 

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky j 

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble, like chaffj 

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, 

And " Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!" 

" How they" 11 greet us !" — and all in a moment his roan 
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; 
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate^ 
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.'' 

All this is very terrible, and would be almost in the 
spirit of the Imperial command to the orderlies to crever 
leurs montures ; were it not that the very strength of the 
description shows how much the poet felt for the suffering 
animals, though he expresses no sympathy directly. But 
the tenderness of the man capable of loving a good horse 
is reserved entirely for the last two stanzas, where it is 
expressed in the manliest way, yet in a way so affecting 
that no noble-minded person who read the poem aloud 
could get through those last stanzas, when he came to 
them, without some huskiness of emotion in the voice, 
and, perhaps, just a little mistiness in the eyes. 

' Then I cast loose my buff coat, each holster let fall, 

Shook off my jack-boots, let go bell and all, 

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 

Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer ; 

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, 

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 



HORSES. 67 



And all I remember is, friends flocking round, 

And I sat with his headHwixt my knees, on the ground; 

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 

As I poured down Ms throat our last measure of wine, 

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.' 

This is the ideal of the relation between man and horse, — 
the horse serving man to his utmost, lending him his swift- 
ness with a perfect good will, — the man accepting the 
service for a noble purpose, doing all he can to make the 
work lighter for his servant, and at last, when the great 
effort is over, caring for him as tenderly and anxiously as 
if he were a brother or a son. This is the ideal, but the 
reality too often falls short of it on both sides. There 
does not exist in the minds of owners of horses generally 
that touch of romantic sentiment which translates itself in 
affectionate companionship and tender care. The horse 
is a valuable animal, and is, on the whole, looked after 
fairly well, his health is cared for, he is usually well fed, 
and horses used for private purposes are seldom over- 
worked. But there is a remarkable absence of sentiment 
in all this, which is proved by the facility with which, in 
most European countries, men sell their horses, often for 
bodily infirmities or imperfections, in which there is no 
question of temper, and especially by the custom of selling 
a horse which has done faithful service, merely because 
he is getting old and weaker than when in his prime. 
This last custom proves the absence of sentiment, the 
more completely that every one knows when selling an 



68 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

old horse that he is dooming him to harder work and 
worse keep, and that the certain fate of -a horse which we 
part with because he is old, is a descent to harder and 
harder conditions, till finally he is worked to death in a 
cab, or in a cart belonging to some master little less 
miserable than himself. 

The whole subject of the relation between the horse 
and his master depends upon the customs which regulate 
our life, and which have regulated the lives of our fore- 
fathers, in all sorts of other ways. V/e are not enough 
with our horses to educate either their intelligence or 
their affections ; and as there has been the same separa- 
tion in preceding centuries, the horse has inherited a way 
of regarding men which scarcely tends to make their 
relation more intimate. There are a few exceptional 
cases in which traces of affection are distinctly perceptible 
in horses, but by far the greater number of them are 
either indifferent, or decidedly hostile to humanity. Man 
loves the horse, at least some men love him, from feelings 
of gratitude and pride. When your horse has carried you 
well in battle, or on the hunting-field, you are grateful to 
him for the exercLe of his strength and courage in your 
service ; when he has borne you majestically on some 
occasion of state, or enabled you to display the grace, 
and skill, and the manly beauty of your person, before 
the admiring eyes of ladies, you are proud of him as a 
statue, if it could feel, would be proud of the magnifi- 
cence of its pedestal. The saddle is a sort of throne for 
man : when seated there, he has under him the noblest 



HORSES. 69 



of all the brutes, so that he may be said to sit enthroned 
above the whole animal creation. It is from a feeling of 
the royalty of that position, that kings, if they are good 
riders, always prefer to enter a city on horseback, when 
a great effect is to be produced upon the minds of the 
people, well knowing that a leathern saddle, simple and 
hard as it is, has more of royal dignity than the silken 
cushions of the gilded coach of state. An incident 
occurred lately on the entry of King Amadeus into Lerida, 
which showed him, as by an acted simile, in the charac- 
ter of a sovereign whose throne is not stable, yet whose 
hand is firm. A shower of flowers rained from a trium- 
phal arch as the Savoyard king rode under it, and his 
charger plunged so violently that no one but a thorough 
horseman could have kept his place. All the peoples of 
the earth like their kings to be fine horsemen, and the 
crowd thought that in his tossing saddle Amadeus came 
royally into Lerida ! 

Our pride in horses, our admiration of their beauty 
and their strength, produce in us a certain feeling of 
attachment to them, but rarely a deep affection. The 
trouble of attending to the wants of horses, of grooming 
and feeding them at stated times, can rarely be under- 
taken by the owner himself, and would be a perpetual 
annoyance to him unless he had a most exceptional 
liking for the animal, so as to be always happy when 
about the stable, as schoolboys are when the first ardent 
^Dan-Kid is upon them. It is a trouble to most men to be 
even obliged to exercise a horse quite regula *ly, a rich 



70 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

man likes to have horses at his door when he wants 
them, but to have no trouble about them at other times, 
using them as living velocipedes, and thinking no more 
about them in the intervals than if they were made of 
well-painted iron. Hence, there comes a personage 
between the horse and his master, who feeds, cleans, 
gently exercises the animal, and is seen and heard more 
frequently by him in the course of one week than his 
owner is in a month. There are the long absences of 
the owner also, when he is staying in other people's 
houses, or travelling, or at another residence of his where 
he has other horses, or in his yacht where all horses 
whatever would be much out of place. The owner, then, 
from the horse's point of view, is a man who makes his 
appearance from time to time armed with a whip and a 
pair of spurs, gets upon the horse's back, compels him 
to trot, and gallop, and jump hedges, and then suddenly 
disappears, it may be for several weeks. The two lives 
are so widely separated that there hardly can be any 
warm affection. If the horse loves any one it is more 
likely to be the groom than the master, but the groom 
has often disagreeable manners (to which horses are ex- 
tremely sensitive), and in some houses he is changed 
as frequently as a French minister. On the whole, the 
horse very seldom enjoys fair opportunities for attaching 
himseh to any human being. It would be inter- 
esting ior a true <piXt7nror P 6<t>oe, a rich bachelor (a wife would 
object to the scheme), to live permanently in a large 
hall, into which three or four horses of a race already 



HORSES. 71 



intelligent should be admitted at all hours, from the time 
they were foals, just as dogs are in a bachelor's room in 
the country. They should not be tied up, but freely 
allowed to walk about under penalty of a reprimand if 
they upset the furniture, and to poke their noses over 
their master's shoulder when he was reading or eating 
his dinner, during which they should have a lettuce, or 
a cabbage, or something else to suit their tastes. In a 
word, I am supposing that in this hippie Utopia the 
horses should be treated as nearly as possible like dogs. 
It would be highly interesting to watch the effect of such 
a continual association between the horse and his master, 
and still more interesting if it could be kept up during 
several generations. The powers of affection in the 
horse are for the most part latent. We see faint signs 
of them, and there is a general belief that the horse has 
such powers, which is founded partly on some exceptional 
examples, and partly on a subtle satisfaction in believing 
that Ave are beloved by our slaves. But the plain truth 
is, that horses, as they live usually in our service, have 
little to love us for, and most commonly regard us either 
with indifference or dislike. The slightest demonstration 
of attachment wins us in a moment, and we exaggerate 
it because it flatters our amour propre. When a horse 
neighs at our coming, it is most commonly a request tor 
corn, and some of his other demonstrations are very 
equivocal. Some men tell you when their horses set 
their ears back, and show the white oi their eye, and try 
to bite, and kick at them in the stable, that all these 



72 CHAPTERS OS ANIMALS. 

are merely signs of playful affection. In short, there is 
a distinct passion in man's heart for which the Greeks had 
a name, but which in England we call the love of horses, 
and tin's has its illusions like every other passion. Know- 
ing this, I hardly dare venture to say precisely what I 
think about the horse, but a well-known French saying 
is applicable to his case : En amour, Vun des deux aime, 
et V autre se laisse aimer. So I should say of the horse, 
it se laisse aimer. 

When we come to the active vices, the hatred and re- 
bellion of the horse against his master express them- 
selves very plainly, much more plainly than equine 
affection expresses itself ever. Many of these vices are 
hereditary in the equine blood, are a tradition of ill-usage. 
The way in which they burst forth in horses, apparently 
of the most tranquil character, is one of the mysteries of 
nature. Three instances have occurred in my own stable, 
of animals becoming suddenly and irremediably vicious, 
passing in the course of three or four days from a state 
like that of Paris under the Empire to the rage and re- 
bellion of Paris under the Commune, and neither in these 
cases, nor in any other that has come under my observa- 
tion, has a real vice ever been permanently eradicated. 
Horses become vicious from many causes; the most 
frequent, I think, is idleness, in combination with 
confinement and good keep. Out at grass a horse be- 
comes wild rather than vicious, and mere wildness is 
easily curable by gentleness and patience. Tied up in a 
stable, with plenty o* hay and corn, his system accumu- 



HORSES. 73 



Iates the electricity of irritability which ought to have 
been regularly expanded in work, and it explodes in 
dangerous violence. Four days' idleness in an inn-stable, 
during wet weather, cost me the most valuable horse I 
ever possessed. On the fifth day no man could ride 
him, and no man was ever able to ride him afterwards.* 
A black Irish horse, who served me well during a year, 
and was an excellent leaper, was suddenly lost to me in 
the same way, and the same thing occurred with a power- 
ful Scotch Galloway. Most men who have had some 
experience of horses will have known such cases. No 
form of disappointment is more provoking. The ani- 
mal, after vice has declared itself, seems exactly the 
same creature that he did before. Has he not the same 
limbs, shape, colour ? Is not the spot of white upon his 
forehead precisely in the same place ? Is not his tail of 
the same length ? Nothing is altered that the eye may 
detect, but there is the same change that there is in a 
wine-bottle when somebody has poured the wine out 
and replaced it with deadly poison. In the animal's 
brain there dwelt a spirit that was your most faithful ser- 
vant — your most humble and dutiful friend ; that spirit 
is gone, and instead of it there is a demon who is deter- 
mined to kill you whenever an opportunity offers. The 
Teutonic legends of black steeds with fiery eyes that 



• I begged the late Lord Hawke, who was the best rider, or one of the 
three best, I ever knew, to make a trial of him, but the results were the 
same as with myself and the rough-riders, and the verdict, "Nothicg to be 
made of him." 

K 



74 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

were possessed by evil spirits, are no more than the 
poetical form that clothes an indubitable truth. The na- 
ture of the horse is such that he is capable of endless 
irreconcilable rage, against his master, and against 
humanity, — a temper of chronic hate and rebellion like 
that of Milton's fallen angels, keeping the fierce re- 
solve — 

' To wage by force or guile eternal war 
Irreconcilable.' 

If there is anything in the world of nature that seems 
clear, morally, it is, that man has an authentic right to 
require reasonable service from the horse. The adapt- 
ation of the animal to labour of various kinds, the use 
that man has made of him from the dawn of history, are 
enough to prove a Divine intention. It is foolish enough, 
I know, to carry speculation about Divine intentions far, 
because slave-owners might speak, and have spoken, of 
obvious Divine intentions in their favour ; and if a tiger 
ever wasted his time in theological controversy, he might 
prove a Divine intention in favour of his eating English- 
men. However this may be, I feel perfectly satisfied 
that man was made to be equestrian (at least, a certain 
proportion of mankind), and that the horse was made to 
carry him ; and with this conviction I have no hesitation 
in making the horse do his duty, by gentle means, if 
possible, — -by harsher means, if necessary. But when a 
horse is once really and truly possessed by a devil, 
gentleness is of no use. Then come the great combats, 
the great cruelties ; and the more cruel you are the more 



HORSES. 75 



does the creature hate you. If you are mild, he regards 
you with contempt ; if harsh, with ever-increasing hatred. 
In these cases there is no medium, and it is only men 
who are endowed with a peculiar physical (perhaps mag- 
netic) influence over horses, who can effect anything like 
a reconciliation. 

When you see, however, the thousands upon thousands 
of horses which do their duty, on the whole safely and well, 
in London, in the country, in the army, about railway- 
stations, breweries, and business places of all kinds, you 
will conclude that the horse-demons are rare in propor- 
tion ; and, indeed, happily they are so. Most horses are 
fairly good, and in some races almost all of them are 
docile. In other races vices of different kinds are very 
common. Take the Corsican ponies, for instance, a 
hardy little race of much speed and endurance, very 
useful to drive in pairs in small phaetons ; they are nearly 
always vicious, though seldom vicious enough to interfere 
materially with their usefulness. A tiny pair were offered 
me with a pretty carriage, the whole equipage suspicious- 
ly cheap, but I discovered that one of the charming little 
creatures would kick like the youthful Tommy Newcome 
in Doyle's sketch, and the other bit like a wolf. After- 
wards, I found that these accomplishments were common 
to the Corsican breed ; in fact, that they were generally 
as energetic, but as wilful and difficult to deal with, as 
their little human compatriot, Napoleon. On the other 
hand, there are breeds where gentle tempers and amiable 
manners are hereditary. 



/6 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

In the etchings which accompany this chapter, Vey- 
rassat has given us the horse at liberty and in service. 
Both plates represent very happy moments of equine life, 
for sweet to the horse are the Elysian fields of liberty, 
and sweet also the hour of rest, and the feed by the way- 
side inn. 



77 



CHAPTER V. 

HORSES {continued). 

The second of the two illustrations which accompany 
this chapter, representing horses on a battle-field, has 
none of the romantic beauty with which painters have so 
often given a delusive charm to subjects of a like nature ; 
but the ugliness of this etching (a sort of ugliness which 
is quite admissible in serious art) may be attributed to 
strong and recent impressions received by the artist from 
the reality itself. The peaceful inhabitants of London 
have ideas about cavalry horses which would be greatly 
modified by a week's experience of Continental warfare. 
The British army requires few horses in comparison with 
the vast numbers which are absorbed by the forces of 
Germany or France, so that there is wider latitude for 
selection, and no horse which has the honour of carrying 
a British soldier is ever publicly seen in his native land 
without having everything that can affect his appearance 
entirely in his favour. The man who rides him, though 
apparently his master, is in reality his servant, as every 
youth who enters the ranks of a cavalry regiment dis- 



78 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



covers when his young illusions fade. All the things 
which the animal has to carry are, by the craft and taste 
of the clever equipment-makers, turned into so many 
ornaments ; and even when not positively beautiful in 
themselves, are so devised as to enhance the martial 
effect, and make you feel that you are in the presence of 
a war-horse. Bright steel and brass, in forms unused 
about the saddlery of civilians ; furs and saddle-cloths, 
the latter decorated with lace round the edges, and per- 
haps even embroidery in the corners ; a luxury of straps 
and chains, a massiveness peculiarly military ; all this 
strikes the civilian imagination, and the battle- steed, even 
when not in himself a particularly perfect animal, has 
generally a noble and imposing air. All his belongings 
are kept so clean and bright that we respect him as a 
member of the aristocracy of horses. He is brushed and 
groomed as if he came from the stables of a prince. To 
these advantages may be added that of his superior edu- 
cation, which tells in every movement, and his pride, for 
he is proud of all his superiorities, and the consciousness 
of them gives grace to the curve of his neck, and fire to 
his eye, and dignity to his disdainful stepping. 

These glories of the war-horse are to be seen in their 
highest perfection in that prosperous and peaceful capi- 
tal of England where the thunder of an enemy's cannon 
has never yet been heard. The English household ti oops 
are the ideal cavalry, good in service on the field of 
serious conflict, but especially and peculiarly admirable 
as a spectacle. I had almost written that the poetry of 



HORSES. 79 



warfare was to be best seen in a charge of the Life-guards 
at a review, but there is a yet deeper poetry in some of 
war's realities where the element of beauty is not so con- 
spicuously present. The boy's ideal of the war-horse is 
that coal-black, silken coated charger that bears the 
helmeted cuirassier, and all those glittering arms and orna- 
ments dazzle the imagination and fill the martial dreams 
of youth. Well, it is very fine, very beautiful, and we 
like to see the Royal Guards flashing past after the Court 
carriages; but last winter I saw another sight, and 
renounced the boy's ideal. 

The armies of Chanzy had been defeated on the Loire, 
and their broken remnants passed as they could to join 
the desperate enterprise of Bourbaki for the relief of 
Belfort. In the depth of that terrible winter, the roads 
covered with snow, with a bitter wind sweeping across 
the country from the east, and every water-fall a pillar of 
massy ice, there came two or three thousand horsemen 
from those disastrous battle-fields. Slowly they passed 
over the hills that divide the eastern from the western 
rivers, an irregular procession broken by great intervals, 
so that we always thought no more of them were coming, 
yet others followed, straggling in melancholy groups. 
What a contrast to the brilliance of a review ! How 
different from the marchings-past when the Emperor sat 
in his embroidery on the Champ-de-Mars and the glit- 
tering hosts swept before him, saluting with polished 
swords ! Ah, these horsemen came from another and a 
bloodier field of Mars ; they had been doing the rough 



8o CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

work of the war-god and bore the signs of it ! T*he brass 
of their helmets shone no more than the dull leopard-skin 
beneath it, the lancers had poles without pennons, the 
bits and stirrups were rusty, and the horses were encum- 
bered with tins and pans for rude cookery, and bundles 
of hay, and coarse coverings for the bitter bivouac. Here 
and there a wearied brute was led slowly by a merciful 
master ; a few were still suffering from wounds, all were 
meagre and overworked, not one had been groomed for 
weeks. Yet here, I said, as the weary troops passed by, 
and others like them loomed in grey masses as they 
approached through the falling snow, — here, and not on 
the brilliant parade-ground, now in this busy harvest- 
time of death, not then in the lightness of their leisure, 
are the battle-steeds most sublime ! All the fopperies of 
soldiering had been rubbed away by the rough hand of 
implacable Necessity, but instead of them what a mov- 
ing pathos ! what grandeur of patient endurance ! Gro- 
tesque they all were certainly, but it was a grotesqueness 
of that highest kind which is infinitely and irresistibly 
affecting. The women laughed at those sorry brutes,' 
those meagre Rosinantes, and at the wonderful odd figures 
that sat upon them, like Quixotes in quilts, riding on the 
wildest of expeditions to meet starvation under the dark 
Jura pine-trees, — but whilst the women laughed the tears 
ran down their cheeks. And here, in this etching of 
Veyrassat, you see what the poor creatures were going 
to, and how at last they were permitted to take their 
rest Yes, here you have the plain truth about the war- 



HORSES. 8 1 



horse. Veyrassat has not represented him as a delica- 
tely-bred animal, and he has treated his saddlery with the 
most complete indifference. This comes of having been 
recently impressed by a sight of the reality. Artists who 
have never seen war are usually very particular about 
spots of light on stirrup and bit, and about the various 
inventions of the military clothier, but Veyrassat has told 
his tale very plainly by the expression of the two heads 
and bodies, the dead horse lying like, what he is, a mere 
heap of unconscious carrion, the wounded one vainly 
endeavouring to rise and neighing to his departing friends 
which he will accompany no more. Horses feel these 
separations more than they feel any separation from 
human friend or master, so that this is a touch of nature. 
A dog would have been occupied in passionate outbreaks 
of lamentation for his master lying stretched there on the 
turf, and would have neither followed, nor thought of 
following, any living being ; but the horse forms his 
friendships amongst creatures of his own kind. Not to 
be able to go along with his old comrades, to be fixed 
to one spot of turf by a shattered limb whilst they are 
galloping to the horizon, must be the most cruel pain 
that this creature can ever suffer in his sentiments and 
affections. 

The conspicuous merit of the horse, which has given 
him the dearly-paid honour of sharing in our wars, is his 
capacity for being disciplined, — and a very great capacity 
it is, a very noble gift indeed ; nobler than much clever- 
ness. Several animals are cleverer than the horse in the 

L 



82 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

way of intelligence ; not one is so amenable to discipline. 
He is not observant, except of places; not nearly so 
observant as half-a-dozen other animals we know. His 
eye never fixes itself long in a penetrating gaze, like the 
mild, wistful watchfulness of the dog, or the steady flame 
of the lion's luminous orbs, but he can listen and obey, 
and his acts of obedience pass easily by repetition into 
fixed habits, so that you never have to teach him more 
than one thing at a time. The way to educate a horse 
is to do as Franklin did in the formation of his moral 
habits — that is, to aim at one perfection at once, and 
afterwards, when that has become easy from practice, 
and formed itself into a habit, to try for some other per- 
fection. A good horse never forgets your lessons. There 
are unteachable brutes which ought to be handed over to 
rude masters and rough work, but every horse of average 
intelligence and gentle temper may be very highly 
educated indeed. Beyond this average degree of teach- 
ableness there are exceptional cases — the horses oi genius; 
for genius (an exceptional vigour and intensity oi the 
mental faculties with correspondingly larger powers of 
acquisition) exists amongst the lower animals in due 
degree as it does in the human species. A few animals 
of this remarkable degree of endowment are picked up 
by the proprietors of circuses, and so become known to 
the public, but the probability is that a much larger pro- 
portion remain in the obscurity of ordinary equine life, 
and that their gifts escape attention. Most of us have 
seen remarkable performances Oi trained horses. The 



HORSES. 83 



most remarkable that I ever saw were those of that 
wonderful black gelding that Pablo Fanque used to ride. 
There can be no doubt that he had pride and delight in 
his own extraordinary intelligence and perfect education, 
just as some great poet or painter may delight in the 
richness of his gifts and the perfection of his work. But 
the circus performance is not the ideal aim of equine 
accomplishment. One would not care much to have a 
horse that would dance or fire a pistol, or pick up a 
pocket-handkerchief, yet it would be pleasant to have in 
our horses the degree of docility and intelligence which 
circus-trainers direct to these vain objects. Many 
accomplishments might be attained that would be valuable 
everywhere. It would be extremely convenient if a 
horse would follow you without being pulled by halter or 
bridle, and wait for you in one place without being 
fastened. A man who had travelled amongst the Arabs 
told me that he had seen many horses that would stand 
where they were left, without any fastening, and some 
will follow you like a dog. A great deal of accomplish- 
ment may go into the ordinary work of saddle and 
carriage-horses, and almost escape notice because we 
think it only natural. But how wide is the difference 
between a trained horse and a raw one ! How slight are 
the indications by which the master conveys the expres- 
sion of his will, how rapid and exact the apprehension ! 
With horses of the finest organisation this apprehension 
rises into a sympathy above the necessity for any 
definite command, they know the master's will by a sense 



CHAPTERS C V AXIMALS. 



c f faint pressures, of limb on saddle, of hand on rein. I 
used to ride a horse which would go on trotting so long 
as I was not tired, but when I began to feel fatigued he 
walked, knowing by my altered manner of rising in the 
saddle that rest would be a relief to me. By this accurate 
interpretation of our muscular action, even when it is so 
slight as to be imperceptible to the eye of a by-stander, 
the horse measures the skill, the strength, the lesolution 
of his rider. He knows at once whether you are at home 
in the saddle or not, and if your movements do not cor- 
respond accurately to his own, he is aware that he can 
take liberties. A bad rider may sometimes deceive the 
people in the street, but it may be doubted whether he 
e vet it reived the animal under him. It is evident that 
a bad rider must be extremely disagreeable to a horse of 
refined feeling, disagreeable as an awkward partner in 
dancing is disagreeable. The intelligence of horses is 
shown in nothing so much as in their different behaviour 
under different men. When a thorough horseman gets 
into the saddle the creature he mounts is aware that there 
are the strongest reasons for behaving himself properly, 
and it is only the mad rebels that resist Not only can 
a good horseman overcome opposition better than a bad 
one, but he has much less opposition to overcome. The 
very best horsemen, amongst gentlemen, are often scarce- 
ly even aware of the real difficulties of riding, their horses 
obey them so well, and are so perfectly suited to their 
work. An English lady who rides admirably, told me 
that she did not deserve so much credit as she got, be- 



HORSES. $$ 



cause the excellence of her horses made riding quite easy 
for her, and she declared that even in her boldest leaps 
the secousse was not very violent. There is a good deal 
of truth in this, which is often overlooked. The relation 
between horse and rider is mutual, and each shows the 
other to advantage. 

Whilst on this subject of riding, let me express a regret 
that good horsemanship is becoming rarer and rarer in pro- 
portion to the numbers of the population. The excellence 
of modern roads, which has led to the universal em- 
ployment of wheeled carriages, and the introduction of 
railways, which are now used by all classes for long or 
rapid journeys, have together reduced horsemanship, in 
the case of civilians, to the rank of a mere amusement, or 
an exercise for the benefit of health. In fact, it is coming 
to this, that nobody but rich men and their grooms will 
know how to ride on horseback; whereas in former 
generations, when the bad roads reduced all travelling to 
an alternative between riding and pedestrianism, men of 
all degrees and conditions went on horseback for consider- 
able distances, and became skilful, no doubt, in proportion 
to the frequency of their practice. What a great deal of 
riding there is in the Waverley novels! Not only the 
baron and the knight, but also the tradesman, the com- 
mercial traveller, the citizen of every rank, go on horse- 
back from place to place. How much healthy and 
invigorating exercise the men of our generation miss 
which, their forefathers frequently enjoyed ! Imagine the 
benefit to a manly youth of the last century, fastened in 



CHJP7ERS OS js:.vjls. 



London behind a counter or a desk, when he was ordered 
to ride on business to Lincoln, or York, or Edinburgh ! 
He had before him weeks of the manliest life a human 
being can lead, and plenty of leisure, as he sat in the 
saddle, for the observation of men and nature. There 
was danger enough to give exercise to his courage ; and 
as the pistols in his holsters were loaded with powder 
and ball, so the heart in his breast had to be charged 
with the spirit of the brave. All men in those days lived 
from time to time a life giving them some brotherhood 
with the knights of the days of chivalry. A London 
tradesman riding 'over the dark heath, robber-haunted, 
thinking about the flints of his big pistols, had need of a 
portion of that manliness which in other times had 
clothed itself in knightly harness of complete steeL 
Consider the difference between passing a fortnight on 
horseback and a night in a railway train — the long 
breathing of fresh air, the healthy exercise, the delight- 
:V. varierv :: scenery, the entertaining change and ad- 
venture; and then the seat in the corner ::" a railway 
carriage, with a poisonously impure atmosphere, and a 
hot- water tin under your feet ! Whoever heard of an 
equestrian wanting a hot- water tin? An ingenious 
French saddler invented stirrups with lanterns under 
them for night-travelling, and the lanterns heated small 
foot-warmers, but his invention had no sale. On the 
other hand, you really cannot do without a foot- warmer 
in a cirrizge vrhen the thermometer is heir.v freezing- 
point This marks the differer. : e :. :he r.vc as :: e::er- 



HORSES. 8/ 



cise. Railway travelling is fatiguing, yet it is not 
exercise. It wears the nervous system, but does not 
help the circulation of the blood. Horse exercise pro- 
duces effects of an exactly opposite nature, it stimulates 
and improves the circulation, and reposes the nervous 
system better than anything except swimming. Our 
forefathers found in travel a double corrective for the 
evils of a sedentary life, and they had the additional 
advantage of not being able to go far without spending 
a good deal of time upon the road — days and weeks — 
during which the system had full leisure to recruit itself. 
Too many of them were senselessly careless about health ; 
they ate and drank a great deal more than can have been 
good for them, and the more robust had little notion of 
moderation in anything : yet they certainly knew less of 
nervous ailments than does our own more thoughtful 
and scientific generation. Their bad roads gave them 
exercise, as their badly-fitted doors and windows ensured 
them an efficient ventilation. We'may still imitate them 
in equestrian tours ; but it is not quite the same thing, 
because we only travel in this way for pleasure, that is, 
when we take a holiday, whereas they did it from 
necessity, at all seasons and in all weathers. 

I read the other day, in a book written for students, 
that walking, and not riding, is the best exercise ; and I 
knew a physician who said he only recommended horse 
exercise because his patients preferred it. On this point 
it may be observed, that no one is likely to get much 
good in the saddle unless he has the true equestrian in- 



88 CHAPTERS OX aXIMJLS. 



stinct, which is as much a gift of nature as the love of 
aquatics. Without the natural instinct you cannot feel 
the peculiar exhilaration which gladdens the born horse- 
man and relieves him from that burden of his cares. 
There is an exulting sense of augmented power in the 
breast of such a man when he feels that all the strength 
and swiftness of the noble animal that bears him have 
become his own swiftness and his own strength ; that he, 
who but a moment before was the slowest of creatures, 
may now follow the wild fox and the antelope ; that, if 
need were, he could traverse three horizons in a day. It 
is this pride and delight of horsemanship, and not the 
mere physical exertion, which gladden the heart of man 
and add to his health and courage. Can any sensation 
be finer than that of a good rider, well mounted, going 
across country at full speed ? Only one other sensation 
is comparable to it, that of steering a lively vessel when 
the mainsail is wet with spray, and the sheet is straining 
tight, and the topmast bends like whalebone, and the wind 
blows fair and free ! 

An American newspaper lamented not long ago that 
rich men in the United States had such a mania for 
driving that they had thrown the saddle aside. The same 
evil may be observed in France, and is even perceptible 
in England, the last stronghold of noble equestrianism. 
The excellence of modern roads, and the perfection of 
modern carriage-building, have brought about this re- 
sult Thousands of men own horses in these days who 
never bought such a thin? as a saddle, aid would not 



HORSES. 89 



know what to do if hoisted into one ; und their carriages 
are so very luxurious as to be beneficial to nobody but 
invalids. There are three classes of horse-owners — the 
men who can ride, the men who can drive, and lastly the 
men who can sit still and be driven about by a coachman. 
To the last the horse is purely and simply a locomotive, 
into which his owner puts fuel and water at stated times 
that it may make his wheels go round. The drivers take 
a real interest in horses, and often show great courage 
and attain quite a surprising skill. Much may be said in 
favour of their amusement, which has a fine excitement 
of its own. A rider commands only one horse, a driver 
may hold four in his hand at once ; a rider hears no 
sound but that of hoofs, the driver hears also the lively 
rumble of the wheels, and feels the pleasant springing and 
swinging of the well-built vehicle under him. The 
rider serves no one but himself, the driver has an agree- 
able sense of importance when the drag is crowded with 
fair passengers for whose safety he feels himself respon- 
sible. Our modern usages, which prohibit splendid 
saddlery to civilians and have made all ornamentation of 
it inconsistent with good taste, still allow some splendour 
in carriage-harness, silver crests and buckles, and other 
things not absolutely necessary, and in the carriages 
themselves there are displays of wealth and luxury which 
could never be concentrated in a saddle. When a rich 
man has a taste for ostentation, he gratifies it more easily 
in carriages than in saddle-horses. When a poor man 
has five children and one horse, the beast cannot carry 

M 



9 o CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

the whole family on his back, but he can easily drag it 
behind him in a four-wheeled conveyance. Even a 
bachelor who keeps only one horse has cogent reasons 
for preferring harness. A saddle-horse can carry his own 
person, but his owner cannot take a servant with him nor 
offer a place to a friend. All the reasons of convenience 
(the most powerful of all reasons in the long run) are on 
the side of harness in every country where the roads are 
good. There are parts of France where it is already 
thought an eccentricity to ride on horseback, and where 
equestrians are so rare that if ever one makes his appear- 
ance the children stare and laugh, and the grown-up 
people smile, as they would at a man on stilts. In 
neighbourhoods of that kind it is dangerous to a man's 
reputation for gravity to be seen on horseback, and men 
of serious pretensions have the same objection to the 
saddle that a bishop has to a bicycle. Hunting and war 
keep up the art of riding ; without them it would be in 
great danger of going out altogether, as falconry has gone 
out, to be revived, like falconry, at some future period by 
a few persons of wealth and leisure, as a curiosity of an- 
cestral custom. 

The influence of the turf on horses and on horseman- 
ship deserves more thorough investigation than these 
brief chapters would permit. It does little or no good to 
riding, except by creating a special professional class 
with quite peculiar professional aims ; and it does no 
good whatever to the breeding of horses, except by 
transmitting the capacity for great speed at a sudden 



HORSES. 91 



' spurt,' which is usually purchased at the cost of sub- 
stantial qualities more valuable for common use. Prac- 
tically, I believe, the most public benefit that the turf has 
given to England has been her rapid Hansoms. They are 
very commonly horsed, directly or indirectly, from the 
turf, and the swiftness which whirls you through the 
interminable streets of London has been first developed, 
either in the horse that drags you or in some ancestor of 
his, for the chance of a triumph at Epsom, or Newmarket, 
or Doncaster. 

The turf, as it is followed, is not really an equestrian 
recreation, any more than the watching of hired gladiators 
was warfare. The swiftness of horses, being always 
various and always having elements of chance, was found 
to be a convenient subject for betting, and the excite 
ment of being in a great crowd on a race course was found 
to be agreeable to everybody in search of a stimulus. 
Races are a popular institution ; vacant minds like them ; 
and they are liked also as an amusement by some minds 
too distinguished in serious pursuits to be liable to any 
accusation of vacancy. Yet it seems probable that the 
truest lover of horses would be of all men the least likely 
to devote himself passionately to the turf. What, to him, 
could be the pleasure of keeping animals to be trained 
and ridden by paid agents, and never to know their 
master ? 

The influence of the turf upon the physical perfection 
of the horse has not been favourable to his beauty. The 
race -horse has lost the beauty of nature in one direction, 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



as the prize-pig has departed from it in another. That 
which his forms express is not beauty, but culture. You 
see at once that he is a highly artificial product, the 
creature of wealth and civilization. Many people admire 
him for that, because there is an inextricable confusion 
in the popular mind between ideas of beauty and ideas 
of careful cultivation. The race-horse has the charms of 
a tail-coat, of a trained pear-tree, of all such superfine 
results of human ingenuity, but he has lost the glory of 
nature. Look at his straight neck, at the way he holds 
his head, at his eager, anxious eye, often irritable and 
vicious ! Breeders for the turf have succeeded in 
substituting the straight line for the curve, as the 
dominant expressional line, a sure and scientific manner 
of eradicating the elements of beauty. No real artist 
would ever paint race-horses from choice. Good artists 
have occasionally painted them for money. The meagre 
limbs, straight lines, and shiny coat, have slight charms 
for an artist, who generally chooses either what is beau- 
tiful or what is picturesque, and the race-horse is neither 
picturesque nor beautiful. Imagine what would become 
of the frieze of the Parthenon if you substituted modern 
race-horses for those admirable little chargers the Athe- 
nian loved so well ! They have the true hippie beauty : 
fine curves everywhere : if they are not servile copies of 
pure nature, it is only because they reach a still 
higher fidelity to the Divine idea. Yet there exists a 
type superior even to the noble horse of Phidias. In 
the heart of Nejed, where the long-pursed unbeliever 



HORSES. 93 



comes not, blooms the flower of equine loveliness. Who 
that delights in horses would not envy Mr. Palgrave 
his sight of the stables of Feysul, the royal stables of 
Nejed ? Ut rosa fios florinn, so are those the stables of 
stables ! The bold traveller, at his life's hazard, saw 
with his bodily eyes what our painters see only in their 
dreams ! 

' Never/ he wrote afterwards, ■ never had I seen or 
imagined so lovely a collection. Their stature was indeed 
somewhat low : I do not think that any came fully up to 
fifteen hands ; fourteen appeared to me about their 
average ; but they were so exquisitely well shaped, that 
want of greater size seemed hardly, if at all, a defect. 
Remarkably full in the haunches, with a shoulder of a 
slope so elegant as to make one, in the words of an Arab 
poet, go " raving mad about it ;" a little, a very little 
saddle-backed, just the curve which indicates springiness 
without any weakness ; a head, broad above, and taper- 
ing down to a nose fine enough to verify the phrase of 
U drinking from a pint-pot " — did pint-pots exist in 
Nejed ; a most intelligent and yet a singularly gentle 
look, full eye, sharp, thorn-like little ear ; legs, fore and 
hind, that seemed as if made of hammered iron, so clean 
and yet so well twisted with sinew ; a neat round hoof, 
just the requisite for hard ground ; the tail set on or 
rather thrown out at a perfect arch ; coats smooth, 
shining, and light ; the mane long, but not over- grown 
nor heavy; and an air and step that seemed to say, 
" Look at me, am I not pretty ? " — their appearance 



94 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

justified all reputation, ail value, all poetry. The prevail- 
ing colour was chestnut or grey, a light bay, an iron 
colour ; white or black were less common ; full bay, flea- 
bitten, or pie-bald, none. But if asked what are, after 
all, the specially distinctive points of the Nejdee horse, I 
should reply — the slope of the shoulder, the extreme 
cleanness of the shank, and the full-rounded haunch, 
though ever}' other part, too, has a perfection and a 
harmony unwitnessed (at least by my eyes) anywhere 
else.' 

Even the Arabs we see in Europe, however inferior to 
that purest breed of Xejed, are enough to make cl^ar to 
us what the Arabian ideal is. That it is <"h^ central 
Divine conception of horse-beauty, I think no artist 
doubts, though artists often prefer other races from after - 
tion, or because their own art is mor^ pi-.turesque than 
beautiful. Veyrassat, for instance, who csn etch car - 
horses as nobody else can etch them, has never, I 
believe, cared to illustrate the more graceful breeds that 
excite the enthusiasm of poets. So it has been with 
Rosa Bonheur, and the whole picturesque school gene- 
rally ; they take naturally to the cart-horse, whose 
massive grandeur satisfies them. Preferences of this 
kind, in the practice of artists, do not, however, prove 
anything against the supreme beauty of the Arab. The 
best painters always work more from sympathy and 
affection than from admiration, and they take as models, 
not what even they themselves consider most beautiful, 
but what will take its place best in the class of pictures 



HORSES. 95 



that they paint. The truth is, that the Arab is much too 
beautiful to be admissible in the pictures of the rustic 
schools ; he would spoil everything around him, he would 
be as much out of place as a Greek statue in a cottaje 
interior. Even the Greek horses of Phidias are too noble 
to be ridden by cavaliers not endowed with the full 
beauty of the human body, beautiful strong arms to 
hold the restraining bridle, beautiful strong legs to press 
the charger's sides ! And how then shall you paint the 
daintily-exquisite Arab along with wooden-shod Nor- 
mandy peasants, and fustian-breeched Yorkshire grooms? 
Where shall we find a rider worthy of him ? Not the 
mean-looking modern Sultan, going cloaked to the 
Mosque on a Friday ; not even the white-robed Emir, 
ringed by a host of spears ! Far in the distance of the 
past rises the one romantic figure worthy to mount the 
perfect Arab. Rich in jewelled caparison, the faultless 
horse awaits him ! The saddle is empty as yet, and its 
diamonds flash in the torchlight, but the little sharp' ears 
are listening, they have detected the step of the master ! 
There is a movement in far corridors, the golden gates 
are open. Like a stream that glitters in moonlight, the 
court descends the stair ! The master sits in the saddle, 
the proud steed steps along the street ; all men are pro- 
strate before the Caliph. 

1 Sole star of all that place and time 
I see him— in his golden prime, 
The good Haroun Alrasohid 1 ' 



9 5 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BOVINES. 

The patient oxen ! This is their main virtue, patience. 
And their chief gift or endowment is strength. No 
animal known to us in Western Europe has patience 
comparable to that of the ox, and for vast strength, 
steadily exerted, he is above rivalry. The dray-horse is 
as strong, but he does not possess the persistent steadi- 
ness of trained oxen. The bovines have not the horse's 
irritability; their temper is very calm, slow to anger, 
and of infinite endurance. They work always upon 
nature's grand old principle of unhurried but untiring 
application, pushing on always with pressure equal to 
their task, as if life in this world were infinite for them, 
and the hours, instead of flying, walked on at their own 
slow pace. Better servants man never had, and not- 
withstanding their slowness they achieve enormous 
results. 

The animals which work for us show their character, 
as men do, in their work ; and therefore, in speaking of 
the working animals, let me inquire, first, how they 



THE BO FINES. 97 



acquit themselves in service. The time when these 
animals are grandest is not, I think, their idle time ; not 
the hours they pass in luxurious indolence at summer 
noontide, under the shade of widely-spreading trees, but 
their moments of supreme effort in harness, dragging 
great wains home in the late evening, when the sky 
is charged with thunder and the harvest is hastily 
garnered. 

It has always seemed inexplicable to me that oxen 
should be so much used for labour in one country and 
not used at all in another not divided from it by any 
visible line of demarcation, and that this usage of em- 
ploying oxen in agriculture should descend traditionally 
in some places and not spread itself in other places 
where there seems to be no reason for believing that 
they would not be equally useful. I can only suggest, 
as a possible explanation, that in some regions the 
breeds are better adapted for labour than they are in 
others ; though, of course, there would be the obvious 
answer, that when people really care to possess any kind 
of animal that can be easily acclimatised in their land, 
they take the trouble to import it. I imagine that, for 
agriculture of a primitive kind, such as that common in 
the regions where oxen are principally used, the advan- 
tages of employing these animals or horses are so very 
nearly and nicely balanced, that mere habit and tradition 
will settle the question either way ; but it is clear that, to 
very small farmers indeed, such as the poor peasant 
landowners of France, there is a gain in employing oxen 

N 



98 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

or cows, because they are sure to have some animals of 
that kind, whereas a horse is as much a matter of sepa- 
rate acquisition as a steam-engine. It is very possible 
that prejudice may interfere in this matter as it does in 
so many others, even against pecuniary interest ; and 
just as Europeans have been in the habit of throwing 
away an incalculable number of tons of excellent animal 
food, because they had a traditional prejudice against 
horse-flesh, so, on the other hand, may they have gone 
on rejecting an incalculable amount of valuable service 
because they had a traditional idea that oxen were not 
intended for the yoke. They are used in some out-of- 
the-way corners in England, but I have never seen them 
used there, and it is possible that most of our English 
breeds may be too refined and delicate to be efficient in 
farm-labour ; they are sometimes exquisite in form, but 
are not always massive enough in the skeleton for very 
heavy work. In countries, however, where oxen are 
commonly employed, there is little hesitation about 
using rather delicate animals ; more of them are yoked, 
and the necessary amount of force is obtained. The 
difference of custom in the employment of oxen cannot 
be seen in a more striking manner than by visiting two 
old French cities, Sens and Autun, each on a market- 
day. Of the fifteen hundred vehicles that go to the 
market at Sens, not one is drawn by oxen ; or if there 
should be one, it is a chance which may happen twice in 
a twelvemonth. At Autun, on the contrary, you will 
find perhaps a thousand pairs, all the heavy work being 



THE BO FINES. 99 



given to oxen in that neighbourhood, whilst the light 
work, requiring speed, is reserved for horses. But the 
line of demarcation may be fixed more accurately than 
that. In Eastern France that line is the vine-covered 
slope of the Cote d'Or To the west of it oxen are used 
constantly ; to the east of it they are used little or not at 
all. I have never been able to discover any reason for 
this except a traditional custom. The oxen are in this 
case used in a poorer, and the horses in a richer district ; 
but it would be unsafe to draw any general inference from 
that, as it happens sometimes that a comparatively 
wealthy country will use oxen, whilst a poorer one will 
be as faithful to horses as are the inhabitants of gold- 
accumulating Manchester or Middlesex. 

These animals, though not of quick intelligence, are 
very easily educated. To break in one of them the 
farmer simply takes and yokes him with one which has 
seen a year or two of service. The novice requires special 
attention during the first day or two, but he gradually 
gets accustomed to his duty, and comes to understand 
the various signs and sounds by which the will of his 
master is communicated to him. As his temper is usually 
equable, it is not so much any active vice that has to be 
overcome as a certain slowness of understanding. I had 
almost written * stupidity,' but that would be scarcely 
just The ox is not really stupid, but he has Saxon 
slowness, which is a different thing. When a pair of oxen 
are to be educated together, as it is sometimes desirable 
that they should be, they are placed in a team of six, 



ioo CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

with a thoroughly trained pair before them and another 
in their rear. At first they get dragged by those in front, 
or tormented by the horns of those behind, but in a few 
days they work steadily enough to be tried in a cart or 
waggon by themselves. No doubt the manner of ruling 
them varies in different countries , that which I know 
consists of a certain series of motions with the goad, includ- 
ing frequent encouragements with the voice. To direct a 
pair of oxen is something like rowing a boat, and requires, 
in its way, as much skill and science. I mean, that in 
using the goad you must know the exact effect it will 
have upon the animal's motions, which at first is not by 
any means easy. A gentleman unaccustomed to this 
kind of driving could no more take a pair of oxen through 
a crowd of vehicles than a peasant could take an outrig- 
ger from Twickenham to Kew. If you lay the wand 
gently between the horns of one of your oxen, he will 
follow you , but unless you very soon do as much for the 
other your waggon will begin to turn, because the other 
will think it his duty to hang back. If you want to turn 
rapidly, you strike the inner ox across the face with the 
wand (as gently as you like, it is a mere conventional 
sign between you and him), and laying your wand 
between the horns of the outer ox make him follow you. 
If both are to back (and you can make them back a con- 
siderable distance), you strike both across the face repeat- 
edly and somewhat sharply. The peasants of the Morvan 
and the Nivernais always call their oxen by special names, 
and as the beasts know their names as well as dogs do, 



THE BOFINES. ioi 



this saves much use of the goad. A man will drive a 
team of six almost entirely by the voice, calling to each 
animal by his name, when it does not take its full share 
of the work, or in any other way needs a word of admo- 
nition. I need not go more deeply into the system of 
signs by which the goad is made to convey so much to 
the bovine mind, as it is scarcely probable that the reader 
will ever practically require any knowledge of this kind ; 
but it may be observed generally, that pricking an ox in 
one part of his body and pricking him in another do not 
by any means produce the same consequences. It is a 
system of signs, a language, which the ox perfectly under- 
stands, and if you use it without understanding it you 
will produce unforeseen, and possibly disastrous effects, 
like a traveller in a foreign land who gives orders in 
words whose significance he has not thoroughly mastered. 
When the day's work is at an end and the wearied 
teams come back to the stable, it is a pretty sight to see 
them standing in pairs together, still yoked, though 
detached from the waggon or the plough. In a farm 
where the oxen are properly disciplined, each pair will 
wait in their place until the farmer, who stands at the 
door of the stable, calls for them in their turn. Then they 
march forward to the stable-door and bow their mighty 
necks to his hand, that he may remove the yoke ; and 
when the last thong is unwound, and the straw cushions 
and wooden arches are taken away, they lift up their free 
heads gladly, and each one goes to his place. Prettier 
still is their perfect submission when the yoke is put on 



io2 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



in the morning, often by some little boy scarcely emerged 
from childhood, whom yet they obey with an elephantine 
meekness. When we consider how frequently oxen are 
changed, it is surprising that accidents should be so rare. 
It is inevitable that there should be a wide difference 
of opinion between artists and scientific breeders concern- 
ing the beauty of the bovine races. Indeed, there is a 
confusion in the employment of the mere word, by people 
who do not mean the same thing by it If you breed 
cattle with a view to the dairy or the butcher, you come 
to regard them mainly as either cheese-and-butter-pro- 
ducing animals or else beef-producing animals, and then 
a process begins to operate in your mind, to which all 
human minds are so subject that the wisest of them can- 
not escape it — the process of perversion of judgment on 
one matter by association of ideas with another matter. 
You come to tolerate, and more than tolerate, even to 
approve and admire, those peculiarities of form which 
are associated with the kind of productiveness you wish 
for, till finally you arrive at those ideas of beauty which 
prevail in the engravings on inn-walls in very advanced 
agricultural counties and at the great agricultural shows. 
In places where oxen are constantly used for labour there 
is less danger of this, because if they are to have fine 
working qualities they must have good natural shape — 
a strong bony structure, to begin with, well-developed 
muscles, and little superfluous fat The difference between 
an animal of this kind and an ox bred for beef is very 
like the difference between an active young Englishman 



THE BOFINES. 103 



and Daniel Lambert, who may be still remembered by- 
some readers as the fattest man of his generation. It is 
unnecessary to dwell long upon this difference when it is 
so strikingly marked as it is in the case of the animals 
which win prizes, because every reader having artistic 
tastes (and one who had not would not read an essay of 
this kind) sees at a glance that such animals have lost all 
natural beauty, and gained in exchange for it nothing but 
an increased value as material for the food-market. The 
real danger in this and many other things like it, most 
peculiarly and especially to people living in England, is 
an insensible perversion or vitiation of sound natural taste 
by the continual sight of types which are not monstrous 
enough to strike the eye as monstrosities, but are half- 
way between Nature and the consummated triumph oi 
the cattle-breeder. England is an intensely artificial 
country in all those parts of it which are cultivated at all, 
and culture of all kinds is carried so very far, always in 
the direction of material increase, that it is difficult to get 
to see genuine nature there, either in landscape or ani- 
mal beauty.* In a word, it is a large garden, and as 
botanists tell us that we ought not to study botany in 
gardens, so it is unwise to study animal form where it 
has been developed on the principles of the gardener. 
I said that our artificial breeds had lost all natural 

• Readers who happen to be exceptionally placed may demur to 
this, but it is strictly true of the majority of English counties. The 
advance of scientific agriculture is the death of artistic interest. After a 
railway journey through England Rosa Bonheur said, « Vous avez tut Iq 
pitloresque.' We have done more, we have killed the beautiful also. 



104 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

beauty, not having space just then to make the neces- 
sary reserves. But there is an important natural law 
with reference to human interference which cannot be 
overlooked. The law is this. Man may destroy beauty 
of form in living plants and animals, but he cannot destroy 
all those minor beauties of texture and surface in which 
nature often in some measure seeks a compensation for 
the absence of nobler perfections. The prize cow is as to 
shape merely a collection of deformities ; but Nature 
gives her hide a beautiful texture, and her eyes are like 
dark jewels, only better rounded and polished than jewel 
ever was. So, though I have just written that we in 
England have killed, not only the picturesque, as Rosa 
Bonheur said we had done, but the beautiful also ; — I 
meant that noble form of the beautiful which rules the 
main lines of things when Nature has her way : the grand 
slopes of far-stretching landscape, unbroken by wall or 
fence, the tufted distances of boundless forest, and the 
free curves of the unimpeded stream. Yet there still 
remains, even in the trimly-fenced pasture where the 
sleek beeves are feeding, some beauty of surface, like the 
beauty of their own hides — a sleekness in the green hair 
of the well-groomed land — not ugly, not unpleasant to 
the sight when the sun gleams out upon it, and the cloud- 
shadows give the only variety possible to it — that of soft 
and tender gradations. But even in this beauty which 
remains to us — this mere surface beauty — there is a great 
snare, and danger, and temptation. Many of our artists 
arc ruined by the pursuit of it, and others partially vul- 



THE BOFINES. 105 



garised. Sleekness and fat are always dangerous qualities 
for an artist to give his attention to, because sleekness 
leads to a kind of polish which introduces some confusion 
into the expression of the form, and fat conceals the bones 
and muscles on which the expression of energy depends.* 
The finest cattle for artistic purposes in the United 
Kingdom are the little Highland breeds. Rosa Bonheur 
found this out very speedily when she visited Great 
Britain, and painted them with great enjoyment and 
success. Her 'Morning in the Highlands' and 'Scottish 
Raid ' have one source of interest which does not exist 
in her famous 'Ploughing' picture: I mean, that of 
variety in colour. In many breeds of cattle one colour 
seems to be the rule, whilst any deviation from it is an 
exception. For example, in the celebrated and most 
valuable breed for working purposes — the charolais — 
almost all the animals are of a creamy white, passing 
occasionally into delicate shades of pale brown, but never 
offering any striking or picturesque contrasts. Our 
Highland cattle, on the contrary, are marked by the most 
striking variety ; so that if you see half-a-dozen of them 
together in a Highland foreground, the chances are there 
will be at least three different colours — a red beast, a 
tawny beast, and a black beast ; and there is nothing 
undecided about the colours either; but each is as frank 
in its own way as gules and sable in heraldry. To see a 

• So in wood-carving, -varnish or polish of any kind is harbarous; but 
when the carving itself is rude it may be varnished with alvantage, 
because then the glitter partially hides the imperfection of the woik. 

O 



ic6 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



group of Highland cattle just caught by the level rays of 
sunrise, when the cool breeze of the- early morning is 
stirring the edges of their curly hair, all aflame with the 
first splendour of the day — when the black bull stands 
motionless beside his fair or red companions, who are 
glowing like images of pale or ruddy gold— is beyond 
comparison the most effective colour-combination ever to 
be had amongst the animals of Europe. So effective is 
it as to spoil one's eye for all other cattle, whilst the 
memory of it remains vivid. What are the dull beasts of 
the south to us who have seen kine standing together, of 
which one was as the foam of the sea, another like leaves 
in autumn, and a third like blackest night ? 

And not only for their colour are our Highland cattle 
dear to the heart of the artist, but for the uncommon 
grandeur of their bearing. Living half- wild, in scenery 
which is altogether wild, often exposed to the fierce blasts 
that whiten the dark lake, and toss the snow in wreaths 
over the edge of the precipice, they have acquired after 
a thousand years of vigorous resistance to the hardships 
of such a climate a certain grandeur of manner, far re- 
moved from the sleepy stupidity that chews its cud by 
Dutch canals and the sedgy watercourses of south- 
ern England. They must have some tradition amongst 
them, I think, of a time when beasts of prey roamed 
over the Highland hills more terrible than the fox or the 
wild- cat, for to this day they stand prepared for the 
aggressor, and their sentinels snuff the air. 

The influence upon human character of association with 



THE BOFINES. 107 



different species of animals is often very clearly traceable. 
The difference between the French peasant and the 
French townsman of corresponding social rank, which is 
one of the most striking contrasts in character to be found 
anywhere amongst the people of the same race, is due in 
a great measure to the constant association of the peasant 
with his oxen. Oxen, to begin with, walk a good deal 
more slowly than men are generally in the habit of doing; 
and as you never can get them to move any faster for 
more than a minute together, it follows that their driver 
must walk at their pace, not at his own. Two miles an 
hour is their speed, and when you have got into the fixed 
habit, after years of such companionship, of sauntering 
along at two miles an hour, you are not likely ever to be 
particularly brisk, even at the best of times. The French 
peasant thus becomes habitually a slow person, not in- 
dolent, but so remarkably slow, that he always seems to 
need the goad as much as his own oxen. His idea about 
life is that it is a tune to be played in adagio. He has 
no notion of economising time by getting rapidly through 
small and easy duties ; in fact, he considers time only in 
very large spaces, such as the space between seed-time 
and harvest, or that between the feast of some saint in the 
autumn and the feast of some other saint in the spring. I 
doubt if he knows that there are such small subdivisions 
as minutes, or if he does, he thinks about them no more 
than a village blacksmith thinks about the millionth of an 
inch. In all this he is the exact opposite of the fussy, 
petulant little clerks and shopkeepers in the town, who 



ioS CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

are never really happy till they are in a hurry of some 
sort, either genuine or fictitious, and who order about 
the people under them as if the safety of the uni- 
verse would be compromised unless they accomplished 
some utterly insignificant duty with the celerity of a 
conjurer. Nor is the teaching of the ox altogether un- 
profitable. A certain dull wisdom is what his example 
inculcates, and I would rather learn in his school than in 
that of the squirrel or the monkey. He believes hurry 
to be a mistake, and will not fret his nervous system with 
petty anxieties about doing things just at the minute. 
He knows that by the steady pushing of his mighty head 
the work will be done at sunset, and if not just at sunset^ 
then an hour or two later, in the twilight ; and what 
matter ? I cannot say that his companionship is a very 
strong stimulus to intellectual achievement of any kind, 
but he can give what many of us need much more, and 
that is calm. Many a time, when vexed or over-excited 
by labour or by care, I have gone into the stable near 
me where the great oxen are, and spent an hour or two 
merely looking at them, or drawing them. Gradually, in 
their society, a great calm steals over the ruffled nerves 
and soothes them, and it seems useless to vex the brain 
with thinking or the hand with toiling after skill. In this 
way, although oxen are not yet admitted to the suffrage 
in France, it may be quite seriously argued that they 
have an influence over the votes, and a great deal of the 
success of moderate candidates is due to it. The political 
opinions of the ox, if we may judge by the peasant who 



THE BOPINES. 109 



speaks for him, are opposed to novelties and enthusiasms of 
all kinds, being steadily conservative and monarchical. 
Sometimes when he is harnessed with a young skittish 
colt in front of him, which occasionally happens in the 
rural districts of France, I think as I see them, what a 
perfect type that attclage presents of the political state of 
the country. ' Let us be deliberate and moderate,' says 
the ox, ' and if we persevere, all necessary work will get 
duly done in time.' 

There is not a beast of the bovine species more to be 
respected than the poor man's cow. Some poor old man 
or woman invests a fortune in a cow, and leads the animal 
to pick up its subsistence in the ditches, and on those 
sweet irregular little patches of verdure which are to be 
found in the country lanes. Now if an animal is to be 
esteemed according to its value to its possessor, what 
prize bull, what winner of the Derby, is so precious to 
humanity as the meagre cow that the old woman guards 
on the lane-side hour after hour as she ceaselessly spins 
from her distaff? Meagre the cow is, indeed ; so meagre 
that you can study anatomy very satisfactorily by observ- 
ing her, all the bones being so prominent that the least 
observant of students cannot miss them. There is no mis- 
taking the position of the ilium, at any rate. 

In writing about the bovines it seems as if it would be 
an omission not to speak of the most magnificent ex- 
ample of their strength, the rage and fury of the bull, but 
in these papers I intend to confine myself pretty strictly 
to what I have seen, passing only with the most rapid 



no * CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

allusion what I have read of or heard about, else there 
would be no end to the subject. Now, I never saw a bull 
really in a rage except once, and then most of the time, 
as the reader will see presently, I necessarily had my 
back to him, and could observe very little. It fell out in 
this wise. The present writer was descending a certain 
most lovely trout-stream, in his canoe, on a beautiful 
morning in June. In one place the stream passed through 
a great park-like pasture, and in the pasture were a herd 
of oxen with a very fine tawny-coloured bull. This bull 
took offence at the canoe and became furious. He began 
by galloping alongside and bellowing, but afterwards 
dashed into the stream. Had he been a better strategist, 
he would have done this below me and cut off my retreat, 
but the road was open before me and I paddled for dear 
life. The bull got on astonishingly fast, though, in spite 
of the rough, stony river-bed. The water may have been 
seven inches deep, the current, luckily, rapid, but great 
were my apprehensions of grounding, for had I once 
stuck fast my enemy would have been upon me. At 
length we came to a deep pool, with a quantity of snags 
I slipped through these, but they stopped the bull, who 
floundered about for awhile, and by the time he got to 
shore again I was safe in an impenetrable cover. The 
reader will easily understand that I had something else to 
think of than making artistic observations. And the 
truth is, that unless an artist goes to Spain, and studies 
enraged bulls in the arena, himself in safety, he has not 
much chance of painting them otherwise than from imag- 



THE BO FINES. in 



ination. It would be easy to launch out into poetical 
accounts of smoking nostrils, and bloodshot fiery eyes, 
and furious hoofs that tore the ground ; but if I wrote in 
that strain it would be on the testimony of others. 

Cattle have been associated with human history from 
the very beginning, and with the earliest human art, but 
if one attempted to trace them through literature, and 
sculpture, and painting, there would be no end to it. 
Much of the interest, however, with which educated 
people look upon animals which have long served the 
human race is legendary and traditional. I never see 
a very beautiful white heifer without thinking of an an- 
tique sacrifice ; and when a noble ox passes us — the 
noblest in the herd — it is difficult for any one whose 
thoughts revert habitually to the past not to imagine 
him with gilded horns, garlanded, and led towards the 
altar near some pillared temple under the blue Grecian 
sky. The only sight of this kind which I have seen or 
know of is the procession of the fat ox at Paris, which, I 
believe, is sacrificial in its origin, and has descended as 
a usage after its first purpose has been long forgotten. 
I remember the huge oxen elevated on their chariots, 
entering slowly, high above the surging populace, the 
great court of the Carrousel. Then they passed close to 
the Tuileries, and stopped before the balcony, and the 
Emperor came out upon the balcony with his beautiful 
wife and the young hope of his dynasty, and the people 
were merry and shouted, and the beautiful Empress 
cmiled, and Caesar looked satisfied, and the juvenile 



i f. 2 CHAP TERS ON ANIMALS. 

Caesar laughed outright, and all was joyous and gay ! 
Times are changed since then. In this month of January, 
1 87 1, neither Emperor nor Empress ever comes to the 
balcony of the Tuileries, but the palace is full of wounded ; 
and no fat oxen parade the streets, but the people have 
tv/o ounces of horseflesh a-day, and are devouring cats 
and rats ! * 

• The above was written during the siege of Paris. 



I'll 



CHAPTER VII. 

ASSES. 

The world-renowned City of Lyons has many glories, 
— the ever-renewed marriage of the Saone and the 
Rhone, their departure together for the far Mediterra- 
nean, the Imperial street that Paris envies, the great 
' Ascension ' of Perugino, the pilgrim-haunted heights 
whence our Lady of Fourvieres protects her faithful 
town, and looks beyond it across the vast and verdant 
plain to the snowy heights of Savoy. All these glories 
has Lyons, and rich fair women array themselves in her 
splendid tissues ; those tissues that the sad-eyed weavers 
weave with delicate skilfullest fingers, till they are softer 
than English mosses, and brighter than tropic flowers. 

And for one thing more does Lyons claim our admir- 
ation and our gratitude. I speak not now of the arts 
which appeal to the eye only, but of an artistic product 
which, though lovely indeed to the sight, is grateful 
to another sense also, and valuable for the sustenance 
of life. In section like dark-red marble dashed with 
white, it may be cut to an infinitesimal thinness, leaving 
a surface smoother than the finest veneers. In the mass 

P 



u 4 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

it is closely wrapped in silvery foil, to guard against the 
influences of the air. In the sweetest associations of the 
memory the saucisson has its place. Weary after the 
morning's march, the tourist takes it from his knap- 
sack, and lays upon his bread those dainty discs which 
are its slices. The strength of his youth comes back 
to him, and the Alpine snows no longer seem inacces- 
sible. At the stateliest Imperial banquet the saucisson 
is not disdained. At the pleasant picnic by the shady 
river it is found in the welcome baskets. The angler has 
it in his bag, the shooter in his capacious pocket, the 
canoist in his Lilliputian cabin of stores. O saucisson 
de Lyon, sad is the moment when we cast the skinny 
remnant of thee into the stream ; but the little fishes 
congregate eagerly to the banquet, and ask each other 
what noble animal has yielded his flesh for their feasting. 

What animal ? That which Topffer appreciated, and 
Sterne lamented, and Cervantes gave to the immortal 
Sancho ; the animal whose image the art of painting 
perpetually reproduces. In the choicest galleries of 
princes you shall find him faithfully portrayed, and 
the wittiest and wisest of authors have learned phi- 
losophy in his presence. No exhibition of pictures 
would be complete without his likeness, and the very 
cleverest of painters have found him an admirable 
model. Even mathematicians have not forgotten him, 
for is there not a bridge in Euclid which bears his 
honoured name ? 

It may seem a perverse way of beginning the present 



JSSES. 115 



chapter to celebrate the excellence of the sancisson de 
Lyon, which, although confessedly made of donkey, and 
raw donkey, is nevertheless, being dead, incapable of 
exemplifying the beauties of the asinine character, and the 
superiorities of the asinine intellect. Yet in this exordium 
I do but follow the practice of a most accomplished master 
of the literary art, whose articles are models of everything 
that is irreproachable in form. Sainte-Beuve acknow- 
ledged that in his criticisms he always began by saying 
what could be said favourably, and then proceeded to 
direct attention, very delicately and gradually, to those 
limitations, and even deficiencies, which necessarily 
accompany great qualities. Of the ass, when living, I 
could not conscientiously say much that is wholly favour- 
able, but when he appears in the state of saucisson he may 
be praised without the slightest restriction. De mortals nil 
nisi bonum, especially when they are good to eat. Whilst 
on this point I may add that during the siege of Paris, 
when the flesh of all animals went to the stewing-pans, 
and even the menageries were discussed gastronomically, 
the palm of excellence was awarded to the ass. He 
appeared on the tables of epicures, he figured in the 
' additions' at the 'Gilded House,' atthe ' Three Brothers.' 
Is it not sad that he never knew the posthumous 
honours that awaited him ? Ill-used and insulted during 
life, appreciated only after death, his fate resembled that 
of many other philosophers whom the world treated un- 
kindly, and those odour was thought to be sweetest when 
their voices were silenced for ever. 



n6 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

It may seem presumptuous to utter a novel doctrine 
which must necessarily imply that all our forefathers 
have been mistaken, but it really does seem as if the whole 
human race had misunderstood the uses of the ass. 
His flesh was so compounded by the chemistry of nature 
as to be perfect food for man, but his brain was contrived 
with such bumps of obstinacy and resistance that he is 
the most vexatious of all our servants. He ought to be 
permitted to enjoy in peace that purely contemplative 
existence for which his character is adapted, and then, be- 
fore his fibre hardens by age, to be transferred, as pain- 
lessly as possible, to the cook. Everything in his be- 
haviour points to this — his resistance to commands, his 
resignation to suffering, his love of quiet, his persistent 
objection to industry of all kinds. If Balaam's ass spoke 
plainly, do not other asses speak plainly also, generation 
after generation, although their eloquence is wordless ? 

It is popularly said that the ass is the poor man's 
horse, and that Nature in her bounty has given him this 
useful and uncomplaining slave. Then the donkey is 
praised for his sobriety, for his patience, for his strength, 
fortitude, courage, perseverance, and the rest. But is not 
the poor man's horse supplied already by many hardy little 
races of ponies, which are as easily kept as asses, and 
much more easily managed ? Surely the poor man has 
afflictions enough in the world without being condemned 
to suffer from the plaguiness of asinine perversity ? 
Providence never compelled the human race to attempt 
the conquest of the donkey. Horses were provided for 






JSSES. 117 



us in the utmost possible variety, from the miniature 
Shetland to the gigantic English hunter ; but men had 
an idea that donkeys must be useful in some way, and 
they committed the fatal error of riding and driving, in- 
stead of cooking and eating them. 

The use of donkeys is almost as much a matter of 
fashion as the use of oxen in labour. In one country 
you find thousands of asses, and can hardly drive for 
half an hour on a main road without meeting a proces- 
sion of them harnessed to light little carts or carriages ; 
in other neighbourhoods the donkey is nearly unknown. 
The old town of Beaune, in the Burgundy wine-district, 
is famous for the multitude of its donkeys, and the sati- 
rical spirit of neighbouring villages has called the land of 
Beaune le pays des dnes ; with some reference, it is 
believed, to the human inhabitants also. On the other 
hand, there are regions where the absence of the qua- 
druped would afford no opportunity for a sly sarcasm of 
this kind. Yet there are poor men everywhere. 

It happened to me a few years ago that a certain 
member of my household had an unlucky fancy for a 
donkey, and as I was supposed to be a judge of horses it 
was unwarrantably inferred that I must be a judge of 
donkeys also. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that 
beyond anatomical resemblance there is so little in com- 
mon between the two animals that a far more experienced 
horse dealer than the author of these chapters might 
commit a fatal blunder in the acquisition of an ass. How- 
ever, yielding to persuasion, I went to a certain fair where 



1 1.8 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

the asinine race was sure to be largely and worthily 
represented. In one corner of the great public square, 
under shady Oriental plane-trees, I found about a hun- 
dred animals to choose from. There were neat little grey 
ones, scarcely bigger than a large mastiff; there were 
ugly middle-sized ones of the colour of amadou ; and 
there were handsome big ones of a rich dark brown, that 
a cardinal might have ridden in a procession. The little 
ones had a sharp look, and bestirred themselves when 
they were touched ; but it seemed impossible that their 
tiny meagre limbs should do any serious work. The 
miHdle-sized breed was too hideous, although one old 
woman used her utmost eloquence in behalf of an espe- 
cially ill-favoured specimen of that breed, which was to 
be sold along with her foal. The point of her discourse 
was the advantage of hereditary succession. I have no 
doubt the old woman was a monarchist, for she used 
the well-known monarchical argument, that if the mature 
personage be not of much value, there is a successor 
growing up by his side on whom to fix our hopes. * You 
see, sir,' she went on, ' if you buy a donkey all by itself, 
when that one donkey fails you, where will you be ? 
Reflect a little on the numerous accidents and dangers to 
which the life of an animal is ever exposed ! He may be 
taken suddenly ill ; he may fall into a hole and break his 
leg ; sooner or later he may become the victim of 
wasting disease, and there is always old age and decre- 
pitude at the end ! Against all these evils, this beautiful 
young foal in a great measure guarantees you. In pur- 



JSSES. 119 



chasing both animals you provide not only for the present 
but for the future also. L'anesse,' — the scene occurred 
in France, — * l'anesse, c'est le present ; mais l'anon, mon- 
sieur, c'est Vavenir /' 

This last touch, however beautiful as a climax, was 
better suited to a Gallic than to an English audience. 
_ The previous eloquence had enthralled me, but the final 
blow, which was to have riveted my chains, shattered 
them and delivered me. And yet I might have done 
better to let myself be persuaded, and give heed to the 
counsels of the aged, even though not wholly desinte- 
rested. At a distance of twenty yards stood the noblest- 
looking donkey in the fair ; a perfect painter's model, 
tall as a Savoyard mule, with a superb texture, like the 
texture of some precious fur : and a deep beautiful 
colour, in which intense dark browns and purples played 
together — a colour unknown in horses, and which the 
horse, with all his superiorities, has never equalled. There 
was an artistic touch of scarlet ribbon about the head, and 
purest white about the muzzle, to finish one of the prettiest 
pictures I ever beheld. Even the long ears were an 
ornament, and so soft and agreeable to the hand that it 
was a pleasure to caress them. 

According to what the vendor had to say the animal's 
character was as lovely as his exterior. He was the 
sweetest-tempered, the most docile creature man ever 
possessed ; a child might play with him in the stable, a 
girl could harness and drive him. Would I come and 
see? I might see him in the stable; I might drive him 



izo CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

myself about the streets. I saw him in his stall, a little 
child came and played about his legs ; the gentle creature 
regarded his infant friend with an eye as mild and benig- 
nant as it was beautiful. A little maiden came and 
harnessed him to a cart. I took the reins and drove about 
the streets. He was swifter than the flight of summer, 
swifter than the delights of youth ! Xo cruel blows were 
needed, no whip, stick, goad, or other instrument inflict- 
ing pain. His only fault, if fault it were, was a certain 
eagerness, a too abundant energy. I became his happy 
owner, at the price of two hundred francs without harness. 
The harness, which was nearly new, I paid for extra, and 
at its full value. 

Still there were doubts, and if I had known donkeys 
as well then as I do now, enlightened by a painful expe- 
rience, one fact alone would have unsettled me. The sun 
shone in all his glory on the day when first we met, the 
roads 'were clean and hard, the air was fresh and dry. 
A donkey's temper is closely connected with the baro- 
meter ; he is comparatively amiable and vivacious when 
the air is dry, but he subsides into sullen sluggishness 
under the influences of humidity. As to the state of the 
roads, he is delicate as a prettily-booted lady. Mud is his 
abomination ; he cannot endure to splash himself, and 
will not trot on muddy macadam till compelled by the 
cruelty of his driver. Therefore, to try a donkey with a 
view to purchase, it is wise to choose bad weather, for 
then you will see all his faults ; but if, on the contrary, 
you desire to sell, exhibit him when the sun is bright and 



JSSZS. 1 2 1 



warm, the air clear, and the roads in the best possible 
order. It is much to be regretted that no rule of this 
kind has hitherto been discovered for men's guidance in 
the choice of a wife. How greatly would the hazards of 
matrimony be reduced if young ladies would be good 
enough to display quite frankly their good and bad tem- 
pers according to the state of the weather ! A prudent 
lover would then provide himself with a pocket barome- 
ter, and so arrange his visits as to study in turn all those 
varieties of disposition which at present he finds out later, 
when the clergyman has done his work. 

Just at first my purchase was greatly admired, and I 
felt proud of his size and beauty. He was as strong as a 
small horse, and certainly as gentle as any creature could 
be. But one day the baker, who had possessed a hun- 
dred donkeys in his time, and knew the animal too well 
to be deceived, beheld my paragon, and shook his head 
with mild, compassionate smiles. ' That donkey, sir,' he 
observed, in the quiet tone of a master-critic, ' that 
donkey is a handsome beast, and very large and strong, 
but his proper work is to draw a laden cart at a walking 
pace. He never was meant to trot : he may trot now 
and then a little, but never in a regular way. What 
you wanted was a little trotter, and the smaller they are 
the faster they go.' 

We were not long in finding a suitable name for our 
asinine Adonis. The damp weather came and all his 
energy departed. He had the awkwardness of the 
elephant without his intelligence, the slowness of the ox 

Q 



122 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



without his perseverance. John Bunyan, in England, 
would have called him Mr. Go-to-sleep-on-his-legs ; we 
christened him Dortdebout. 

Dortdebont, or Dordebou in the abbreviated form, was 
a perfect model or type of a breed of donkeys which, as 
the baker said, are useful for drawing heavy loads, but 
not to be relied upon for trotting. He had no vice, 
except a perfectly unconquerable obstinacy. He was 
neither irritable nor revengeful, and it seemed cruel to 
use him harshly, for he showed no trace of rancour. A 
mild, meek creature, incapable of malice, he gazed at 
his persecutors with soft dark eyes, as if in simple wonder 
that men could be so relentless. After receiving a 
hundred blows he would make a feeble attempt at kicking, 
but this never went any further than a perpendicular 
lifting of the hind-quarters, and a sudden switching of 
the tail. When in harness, and not fully convinced of 
the necessity for making the journey that lay before him, 
he always went straight to the ditch, as his safest place 
of refuge: but he did not lie down, as many of his 
brethren do, and he never broke a shaft or a strap. On 
a muddy road, and in a state of mental aversion from 
labour, his average rate of progression was a mile and a 
quarter per hour, exactly ; and in cold rainy weather it 
was his delight to keep his persecutors as long as possible 
exposed to the rigours of the season. Occasionally, 
however, as if to prove that his slowness arose from no 
constitutional infirmity, but was merely the effect of his 
own good pleasure, Dordebou would rival for miles 



JSSES. J2 3 



together the swiftest trotters on the road. Not a horse 
in the whole neighbourhood could leave him behind, in 
fair trotting, when the spirit of emulation induced him to 
display his skill. He was an admirer of female loveli- 
ness, both in his own race and in horses, and whenever a 
carriage passed which was drawn by an animal of the 
gentle sex, Dordebou, however languid and tedious 
before, became suddenly inspired by an unshakable reso- 
lution to escort that carriage to the very end of its 
journey. It appeared on these occasions as if his feet, 
like those of Mercury, had been endowed with wings ; 
and had it only been possible, by some ingenious optical 
arrangement, to project the visionary image of a female 
donkey on the road immediately before him, ever 
advancing as he advanced, Dordebou would have 
astonished the world. Thus an artist, with the vision of 
the Ideal ever before him, surprises by the energy and 
rapidity of his career the dull laggards to whom that 
ideal is invisible. But Dordebou, alas ! resembled rather 
those inferior artists who have only occasional glimpses of 
the Beautiful, and who quickly subside into habitual inertia. 
It is several years since I had the honour of possessing 
Dordebou, but the man who bought him from me keeps 
him yet, and loves him. Dordebou is admirably suited 
for his present station in life. He draws a heavily-laden 
cart, and does not profess to be a trotter. His master 
walks by his side and encourages him with many blows. 
I meet the two sometimes and caress the creature's soft 
long ears for the sake of ' auld lang syne,' 



124 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

The next purchase I made was a tiny trotting pheno- 
menon, about the height of a table. Harnessed to a 
very light carriage she was pretty enough to look at; and 
as for going, I never saw living creature go with such 
perfect good will. The impression she produced on the 
mind was exactly that of a toy locomotive, so we called 
her Loco. 

Dear little Loco, model of good temper and cheerful 
performance of duty, my heart softens to all thy race 
when I meditate on thy perfections ! The animal knew 
no guile ; it was in innocence like the lamb, in swiftness 
like the gazelle. Before a week was over Loco was a 
household pet. But so tiny a thing as she was could 
not, with all her good will, draw more than a very light 
weight. Her carriage was a toy, and if more than one 
person got into it she had to make painful efforts. In- 
deed it seemed absurd and wrong for a grown-up man to 
drive such a wee thing at all, and I never did so without 
conscious shame. The ostler at my accustomed inn is a 
strong, tall fellow, and every time he harnessed Loco it 
seemed like harnessing a sheep. Then the carriage was 
so very light that on one occasion it positively upset, 
like a crank canoe, merely because I sat rather too much 
on one side. On the other hand, although the best- 
tempered thing that could be, Loco was quite unfit to be 
driven by children, on account of her irrepressible 
ardour. So soon as she heard your foot on the carriage- 
step she set off at once, with a trot so rapid that her tiny 
legs went like semi-quavers in a presto. We compared 



JSSES. 125 

xer to a toy locomotive, and the comparison would be 
still more accurate if we added, that when the steam was 
once turned on it was impossible to turn it off again. If 
you met an intricate crowd of carts, occupying (as they 
always awkwardly do) the whole breath of the highway, 
Loco would not slacken her pace on that account, but 
dashed with you into the thick of them. Her theory of 
the division of labour was that her business was to go, 
and yours to find the passage ; so that you were con- 
stantly in the position of a navigator in Arctic seas, 
impelled amongst icebergs by an impetuous wind, whose 
incessant anxiety is to find an opening in time. Then if 
you wanted to stop to speak with any one, it was impos- 
sible. Nobody could stop Loco till she got to the stable- 
door. The two stable- doors, that at the inn and the 
other at home, were her two termini, and she knew no 
intermediate stations. 

After finding a new and good home for Loco my per- 
sonal experience as a donkey-proprietor came to an end, 
and I have little desire to extend it. It is simply impos- 
sible to ride or drive the ass with comfort. It would be 
great presumption to decide about the character of an 
animal after studying two specimens only, but it has 
happened to me to make acquaintance with many others, 
and I have never yet seen the donkey which could be 
guided easily and safely through an intricate crowd of 
carriages or on a really dangerous road. The deficiency 
of the ass may be expressed in a single word ; it is defi- 
ciency of delicacy. You can guide a good horse as 



126 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

delicately as a sailing-boat ; when the skilful driver has 
an inch to spare he is perfectly at his ease, and he can 
twist in and out amongst the throng of vehicles when a 
momentary display of self-will in the animal would be 
the cause of an immediate accident. The ass appears to 
be incapable of any delicate discipline of this kind. He 
may be strong, swift, courageous, entirely free from any 
serious vice, but he is always in a greater or less degree 
unmanageable. When he is really vicious, that is an- 
other matter. There is no end to his inventions, for he 
is quite as intelligent as the horse, and a thousand times 
more indifferent to man's opinion or man's punishment 
I have seen a donkey feign death so perfectly as to take 
in everybody but his master, who had been too often a 
spectator of that little comedy. Many asses are danger- 
ous biters. It is probable that the idea of using the ass 
for service would scarcely have occurred to any modern 
nation if it had not come to us from the East. In hot 
sunshine the ass is at his best, and in the dry atmosphere 
of Palestine or Egypt he may display a permanent acti- 
vity. Besides, in those countries he has the immense 
advantage of possessing a foil to set off such merits as are 
really his. People who are accustomed to the camel, the 
most stupid of domesticated brutes, may admire the ass 
by contrast, as Sir Samuel Baker did. And there are 
races of Oriental asses far superior in elegance to ours, 
and superior perhaps in delicacy and docility. 



127 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PIGS. 

ALTHOUGH in every country the upper classes fancy 
themselves to be incomparably more refined than their 
humbler brethren, more delicate in their tastes, and espe- 
cially more fastidious in their invention or selection of 
verbal expression, it may be doubted whether, with refer- 
ence to the valuable animal which is the subject of the 
present chapter, the aristocracy of any country upon 
earth is so elegant and even dainty in the use of lan- 
guage as the ignorant peasantry of France. The present 
chapter will doubtless have amongst its readers many 
ladies and gentlemen who never, from the beginning of a 
year to the end of it, do or say anything that violates such 
laws of good taste as are held to be authoritative in the 
English aristocracy ; and yet I have heard English ladies 
of quite august rank and title, and of the most delicate 
breeding possible, say a word which no peasant-woman 
in Burgundy would utter unless the fury of uncontrollable 
anger made her temporarily forget all tradition of good 
manners. I have heard them say ' pig !' 



128 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

It sounds innocent enough in English, but in France 
most people think it better to avoid the corresponding 
word, and so call the creature a 'pork.' The peasants 
go a step further, and avoid not only the word which 
begins with a c, but the other also. In their different 
patois they have names for the animal which they can 
use, it appears, without shocking their own fastidious 
ears, but when they speak pure French they use a peri- 
phrasis of quite remarkable elegance, hitting upon the 
only peculiarity about a pig which reminds one of gen- 
teel society. They call him tin habille-de-soie, a dressed- 
in-silk. And such is the force of the association of ideas, 
that every time I have lately seen advertised in the news- 
paper the title of a contemporary work of fiction ' In Silk 
Attire' it has conjured up in my imagination the vision 
of a large fat pig, all covered with beautiful white bristles 
shining in the sun like those wonderful silken tissues that 
ladies wear or long for. 

This careful avoiding of the French word for pig that 
begins with a c (the reader may observe that I dare not 
even write it myself, though I hear the sound of it in- 
wardly, which is almost as bad), is due to the fact that it 
has so often been applied to men of improper life. For 
instance, a powerful sovereign walked in the wood with 
his beautiful partner, and they met a child so lovely that 
she stopped to caress it. At length she added, ' This is 
His Majesty, wilt thou also kiss His Majesty ?' But the 
child made answer that he would not, ' parceque Papa dit 
que dest un — ' dressed-in-silk. And this is the way that 



PIGS, 129 

the character of a truly respectable animal has been de- 
graded in popular estimation. 

The uncleanliness of ' the silk-attired' is not moral, it 
is merely physical, and a great deal is to be said in pallia- 
tion of it. The brilliant historian, Michelet, restored his 
health and the vivacity of his genius by mud-baths, which 
Jn certain cases, are strongly recommended by the faculty. 
The reader of M. Michelet's later productions may not be 
aware that his clear and sparkling ideas are due to the 
practice of bathing in a medium so foul and opaque ; and 
the pig, who from time immemorial, by his own unaided 
intelligence, without the advice of doctors, has cheerfully 
gone through the same treatment, may have derived from 
it inestimable benefits, physical and intellectual. Indeed, 
it may be argued that the pig's delight in mud-baths is 
really caused, not by love of dirt, but by a philosophical 
conception and aspiration after cleanliness, which makes 
him indifferent to appearances whilst he secures the rea- 
lity. In the absence of soap the cleanly traveller finds a 
substitute in sand and clay, and so it is with the inhabi- 
tants of our styes. It is a fact that pigs are. generally 
much less infested with vermin than many animals which 
are popularly supposed to be far superior to them in the 
decencies and elegancies of life. Mud is their soap, their 
worst fault being that, like little shiny-faced grammar- 
boys, they too often forget to wash the soap itself away 
when its purifying work is done. It must also be admit- 
ted that they are not always very particular in the choice 
of the soap itself. It is seldom perfumed ; it is often not 



130 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

even pure. On the other hand, it is right to mention the 
well-known peculiarity of the pig, that he is much less 
indifferent than the horse or the ox to the condition of 
his bedding. These animals have no more objection to 
manure than an agriculturist, but the pig is delicate on 
this point in his own habitation, and likes to keep his 
bedding decent. It is evident also, that, however much 
we may differ in opinion from him on the subject of 
smells, his sense of scent is quite as exquisite as our own, 
for he can find the truffle by the help of it like the truffle 
hound, and is regularly trained for that service — a fact 
which ought to ensure him the grateful esteem of gour- 
mands, since not only does he himself supply some of the 
best of animal food, but also by the perfection of his 
organs discovers for them the most delicious of all vege- 
table substances. 

The habit of calling him ' the silk-attired' arose from 
a feeling of respect, not so much towards the animal 
himself as towards the ears of polite society. But as a 
skilful billiard-player sometimes aims at the cushioned 
side of the table in order to hit the balls the more 
effectually, many names have been applied to the pig 
without any intention of injuring his good reputation, 
but rather with a view of creating a converse associ- 
ation of ideas unfavourable to some human individual 
or class. It is a very common practice in France to 
call donkeys * ministers,' not with any purpose of slight- 
ing the Protestant clergy, as such an appellation would 
certainly be interpreted in Scotland, but as a satire on 



PIGS. 131 

the gentlemen who, for the time being, hold the port- 
folios of war, agriculture, public instruction, and the rest. 
And though it may be quite contrary to the rules of logic 
to infer that because some donkeys are called ministers, 
therefore all ministers are donkeys, the humorous and 
habitually-rebellious public enjoys a pleasantry which 
casts a disparaging reflection upon those in authority 
over it. In like manner a certain Count relieved himself 
to some extent of his feelings against the Government 
of National Defence by calling one of his pigs ' Gam- 
betta,' and another ' Monsieur Favre/ always pro- 
nouncing the title Monsieur with well-feigned ceremony 
and respect. Some adopted a more generally inclusive 
system, and called all their pigs ' citizens ' — a satire on 
red republicans which may not be very dangerous in these 
comparatively lukewarm times, but which in the first 
more energetic revolution would have cost the satirist his 
life. A man was guillotined near Autun, in the year 
1793, for having made this jest in a less offensive form, 
since he did not elevate his pig to the dignity of citizen- 
ship, but a favourite dog, his beloved friend and 
companion. In times before modern revolutionary ideas 
were thought of, the pig was not unfrequently resorted to 
for the purpose of satirising the powers that were — even the 
sacred spiritual powers. Amongst the tales of the Queen 
of Navarre there is a story of two Franciscan monks, which 
is founded on this popular habit. ' There is a village,' 
wrote her Majesty, ' between Niort and Fors, called Grip, 
which belongs to the Lord of Fors. It happened one day 



1 3 2 CHAP TER S ON ANIMALS. 



that two Franciscans, coming from Niort, arrived very- 
late at Grip, and lodged in the house of a butcher, and 
seeing that between their chamber and that of the host 
there were nothing but boards badly joined, they had a 
mind to listen to what the husband was saying, and so 
put their ears to the partition close to his bed's head. 
'Wife,' said the butcher, " 'I shall have to get up very 
early to-morrow morning to go and see our Franciscans, 
for one of them is very fat, and that's the one we must 
kill. We will salt him at once, and he will be profitable 
to us/ And although he meant his pigs, which he called 
Franciscans, the two poor monks, who had overheard this 
deliberation, were assured that it referred to themselves. 
and awaited the day's dawn in fear and trembling. One 
of the two was extremely fat, and the other thin ; the fat 
one desired to confess himself to his companion, saying, 
that a butcher who had lost the love and fear of God 
would knock him on the head with as little hesitation as 
if he had been an ox, or other beast ; and seeing that 
they were shut up in their room, from which there was 
no issue but that of the butcher, they might consider 
themselves sure of death, and recommend their souls to 
Heaven. But the young one, not so much overcome 
with fear as his companion, said, that since the door was 
shut, they must try to get out by the window, and seeing 
that it was not too high, leaped down lightly and fled as 
fast and far as he could without waiting for the other. 
Instead of leaping, the fat one fell heavily, and hurt his 
leg. Seeing himself abandoned, and unable to follow, he 



PIGS. 133 

looked about him for a hiding-place, and saw nothing but 
a pig-stye, whither he dragged himself as well as he was 
able. Opening the door of the stye, he let out two great 
swine, and took their place, and shut the little door behind 
him, in hopes that when he heard some passers-by he 
might call to them for help. But so soon as morning 
came, the butcher sharpened his great knives and came 
to the stye, and cried aloud in opening the little door, 
1 Come out, my Franciscans ; come out ; it's to-day that 
I shall have your black-puddings ! ' The Franciscan, not 
being able to stand upright on account of his wounded 
leg, came out of the stye on all-fours, begging for mercy 
as loudly as he could. And if the poor Franciscan was 
in great fear, the butcher and his wife were not less so, 
for they believed that Saint Francis was angry at them 
for having called a beast a Franciscan, and fell down on 
their knees before the poor friar, asking pardon from 
Saint Francis. At last the friar, perceiving that the 
butcher would do him no harm, told him the reason why 
he had hidden himself in the stye, whereby their fears 
were converted into merriment.' Her Majesty goes on 
to narrate, in the most circumstantial manner, that the 
other friar fled all night long, and arrived at the Castle of 
Fors, where he lodged evidence against the butcher; 
whereupon the Seigneur of Fors sent to Grip to ascertain 
the truth, which being known, he told the story to his 
mistress, the Duchess of Angouleme, * mother of King 
Francis, first of the name.' From all these details, the 
locality, too, being given (you will find the village of 



134 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

Grip in any good map of France, in the department of 
the Two Sevres), it may be presumed that the incident 
was not invented by the royal narrator, though artistically 
recounted by her, and possibly a little embellished. The 
retreat of the Franciscan into the pig-stye, and the scene 
of his discovery there, are probably ' unhistorical,' as 
modern criticism has it. But historical or not, it is a 
good story, and the indulgent reader will pardon the in- 
troduction of it here. Je croy qu'il riy a ny sages ny fols 
qui se sceussent garder de rire de ceste histoire. 

Yet how good soever the story may be the reader 
seeking instruction concerning pigs may reasonably com- 
plain of me that, like a certain Franciscan 'plus enlangage 
que docte? who told tales in the pulpit instead of edifying 
his hearers, I am wasting time in vain discourse. There- 
fore let me hasten to prove how eminent must be the 
intellectual * and moral capacities of the pig. An animal 
which was the chosen friend and companion of one of 
the most respectable of saints, a saint especially famous 
for his steadfast resistance to temptation, Saint Anthony, 
can scarcely be unfit society for any Christian. It is on 
record, too, that when the demons tempted the good 
saint they plagued his pig at the same time, catching 
it by the tail, and playing it many other evil tricks, yet 

• As to his intellectual qualities we know that there have been several 
Instances of clever pigs exhibited in shows, pigs of genius, which had been 
taught to distinguish letters and cards. However, I never met with one 
of these animals, and have not an authentic account of one at hand. The 
phenomenon of genius (marvellously exceptional endowment) occurs 
probably in many races of animals. 



PIGS. 135 



the pig remained faithful to his saintly master notwith- 
standing the remarkable inconveniences of such associ- 
ation. The demons singed him whilst yet alive, and 
they made a horrible ring-dance with the pig in the 
middle, compelling Saint Anthony to exercise himself as 
one of the dancers : — 

' Faisons-le danser en rond 
Tout autour de son cochon ! ' 

No doubt Saint Anthony loved his pig with an 
affection far more honourable to both parties than the 
love which men commonly bear towards , * the silk- 
attired.' As an illustration of the latter and less ennobling 
sentiment, I may mention a capital picture by Marks, in 
which that charming and original artist, with the quaint 
humour which is peculiarly his own, depicted a scene 
which he was pleased to entitle * Thoughts of Christmas.' 
A monk wandering amidst great boles of ancient trees 
stops to gaze upon a herd of swine, rapidly fattening, 
and in the anticipatory expression of his countenance we 
read Christmas thoughts of a character rather gastronom- 
ical than religious. The way in which people look at and 
talked about swine, so exclusively from that monk's point 
of view, as if the sole end of their existence were to be 
eaten, is peculiarly repugnant to a student of animal 
character, and would be equally unpleasant to the pig 
himself could he understand the conversations which are 
so commonly held in his presence. Saint Anthony, no 
doubt, could have told us many things concerning his 



136 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

pig beyond the simple facts of his age and weight, which 
are all that farmers and housekeepers seem to care about. 
Saint Anthony would have enlightened us as to the pig's 
ideas, sentiments, affections, and we should have had a 
true portrait, drawn from long companionship and 
familiarity, not of the pig in general, which anybody 
may describe in a rough way, but of an individual por- 
cine character which had no doubt its own delicate traits 
and interesting peculiarities. Do you suppose that the 
saint could ever think of his pig as so many pounds of 
ham, bacon, sausage, brawn, lard, black-pudding, and the 
rest ? No, Saint Anthony was not a cannibal ; he never 
thought of putting his friend into a flesh-pot, and, though 
having always at his side the living materials of a feast, 
he fed like a true hermit on innocent fruits and fair 
water : 

1 And they loved one another 
Like sister and brother. 

Wasn't it better to do so ? ' 

The unfeeling heartlessness of housekeepers is well 
exemplified in the ferocious joy with which they anti- 
cipate a pig-killing. Mr. Marks could give his monk 
a speaking expression, but he could not make him 
actually talk as you may hear housekeepers talk. Some 
of them even go so far as to declare their intention of 
' killing half a pig' next winter. Now -what instance 
of cruelty to animals can be matched with this ? It 
conjures up the most horrible images, like the phan- 
toms of a ghastly dream. Which half of the pig is 



PIGS. 137 

to be killed, and which to be left alive ? How is the 
animal to be bisected so as to cause the least amount 
of torture to the half which must live and suffer ? If 
this is horrible, the murder of a whole pig, as usually- 
practised, is scarcely less so. The day of his death is 
a day of light merriment and jesting. He utters the 
most piteous cries, but no man regards him. He . is 
taken for the last time from his little home, his stye, and 
cruelly bound till he cannot stir one of his limbs. And 
then the great knife is sharpened, the murderer feels 
its edge, smiling grimly, the idle servant-maids look on, 
gloating over the spectacle, the knife is plunged through 
many an inch of fat and flesh, the red blood spirts 
and gushes and is caught by sanguinary beings, with 
horrid eagerness, for their own devouring ! After the 
sharp pain comes the deadly languor, after the cries 
of despair the silence of dissolution. Then the jesting 
of the bystanders seems louder, and they singe ' the 
silk-attired ' with flaming straw, or scrape and shave 
him till his body is like a curate's chin on Sunday 
morning. And now that he is dead is he not truly a 
benefactor to humanity ? Every atom of him is good 
for food. His body is so valuable that it pays all his 
debts, all the long account that has been gradually 
accumulating against him. Nay, there is even a con- 
siderable balance in his favour, and he bequeaths to 
his murderer a legacy of silver and gold. The idlest 
and most gluttonous of pigs need never fear that the 
stain of insolvency will attach to his memory after 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



death., in which he has an immense superiority ovei 
anxious and improvident men. If his creditor eve* 
reminded him how costly was the gratification of 
that fine appetite of his, he might answer ' habeas 
corpus y and go on stuffing himself with a clear con- 
science. 

Amongst many odd and ludicrous incidents which 
relieved the long tragedy of the Franco-German war, 
I may mention the quite novel and remarkable honours 
which in some instances were paid to the mortal remains 
of ' the silk- attired.' The German soldiers, whose powers 
of digestion would have excited unqualified admiration 
if they had not at the same time been the terror of all 
economical housekeepers, had an especial taste for pig 
in all the various forms which the art of the pork- 
butcher has invented. It became therefore a question 
which taxed the utmost ingenuity of the French, how 
to keep their pigs for home consumption after the de- 
parture of the devouring enemy. A lady whom I know 
conceived the idea of placing her pig under the pro- 
tection of the Blessed Virgin, which she successfully 
contrived as follows : — First she killed it, and then, 
having salted the meat, put it in barrels which she 
interred in a corner of her garden. After that she 
invested a small sum in the purchase of a plaster Virgin. 
and erected a rustic altar above the spot where piggy 
slept in peace. Behind the altar the gardener arranged 
some pretty rock- work with moss on it, on a niche 
whereon the Holy Virgin was honourably installed. The 



riGS. 1 39 

invaders came; they probed the garden everywhere with 
iron rods — everywhere except in that sacred corner which 
the holy image effectually guarded. ' It is here that I 
pray,' said the lady, looking most pious, and the simple 
Germans respected the place of her devotions. A pig- 
owner in another department went a little farther even 
than that, for he laid out ' the silk-attired ' on the best 
bed in the house, and covered it with white sheets with 
such art that the body presented quite the appearance 
of a defunct fat Frenchwoman. Round the bed he 
placed lighted candles, and by the side of it grave- 
faced watchers in the deepest mourning. The Prussian 
soldiers made themselves at home in the other rooms, 
but they respected the chamber of death, and as their 
stay was short, much bacon was economised by this 
stratagem. 

A hideous custom used to prevail in many places, by 
which sucking-pigs were roasted whole and served at 
table without disguise. I knew a country gentleman who, 
being blessed with a fine litter of fourteen, sold them to 
fourteen different friends of his (he had many friends), 
with the condition in each case that he should be invited 
to dinner when the animal was to be eaten, a condition 
willingly accepted by the purchaser. It was not, how- 
ever, from a love of sucking pig, but from a love of 
society that this ingenious conception originated. 

Other charms than gastronomical ones have been 
discovered in young pigs by those who have occasionally 
made pets of them. The animal, though obstinate and 



140 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

self-willed, is really not stupid, and is capable of the 
warmest attachment, and of great fidelity to those he 
loves. All young animals are interesting, but young pigs 
are more comical in one respect than kids, or lambs, or 
kittens, or puppies ; I mean, in the ludicrous combina- 
tion of heavy structure with immense activity and preci- 
pitation. They are prudent in an advance, but they 
always lose their wits in a retreat, and on any decided 
alarm they hurry away in a general sauve qui pent. In 
maturer years an obstinate courage frequently developes 
itself, and they charge with such force that a man cannot 
resist them without using deadly weapons. I remember 
trying to get a pig over a bridge ; we were three men 
against him, all armed with sticks, but he charged us so 
fiercely, that after an hour's hard work, and a hundred 
ineffectual attempts, we were compelled to give in at last, 
and his owner had to seek a wide bridge higher up the river 
which took him nine miles out of his way. On this occasion 
the animal displayed splendid courage and indomitable 
resolution, so that it would have been impossible to 
thwart his purpose without inflicting some serious injury. 
The pig has not been so much painted as he deserves,* 
which is somewhat remarkable, for he is decidedly a 

• It may be observed la passing tbat tbe pig is an important oontri. 
butor to the fine arts by his bristles, which make the most suitable 
brushes for oil-painting. This may seem a small matter to the unin. 
itiated, but the truth is, that the direction of a school's practice is in a 
great measure technically determined by the quality of the brush whirb, 
it prefers. Hog-tools favour a manly style of painting-, .-able-tools a more 
effeminate one. I knew a Scottish artist of great naerii who used to de- 



PIGS. 141 

popular animal, and some breeds of pigs offer very fine 
pictorial material, with rich blacks, and good flesh-col- 
our and texture ; besides which there is a great deal of 
character in their attitudes, especially in their perfect 
expression of repletion whilst the great business of di- 
gestion is going forward. Morland understood pigs, and 
his clever pictures of them found an appreciative public. 
But the tendency of modern breeding is, as usual, against 
the pictorial qualities of the animal. The prize-pig ideal 
is a round mass of matter like a gorged leech, with legs 
so small as to be scarcely visible, and so nearly useless 
as to be incapable of activity. The true pig, kept of 
yore in vast numbers by the swineherds of Gaul and 
Britain in the primeval forests, may not have been a 
pretty animal, but he had many of the fine qualities of 
his ancestor the wild boar, and something of the sub- 
limity of his aspect. The best pigs for a painter to study 
are those which have deviated least from the natural 
type, those which have retained much of its strength, 
courage, and activity, with something of its fiery anger 
and ferocity. They plough the earth as if their snouts 
were of iron, they crash through the underwood like 
young elephants, where the acorns lie thick in the winter ! 
Paint them so in the early forest, watched by the skin- 
clad swineherd, when the wild boars came out in the 
moonlight, and said, ' Let us play together ! ' 

clare that oil paint could not be properly manipulated by any other than 
hog-tools, and that a school which used sables was inevitably on the road 
to a sure and swift decadence. 



1 4 2 



CHAPTER IX. 

WILD BOARS. 

I KNOW a little farm-house, in a lonely dell of the 
Morvan, where the unlucky tenant is plagued by two 
sorts of unpleasant neighbours, vipers and wild boars. 
The vipers keep him and his family in the continual 
expectation of being poisoned, and the wild boars are 
rival agriculturists, ploughing the land in their own 
fashion, and enviously damaging the crops. The farmer's 
lads keep watch and ward against these intruders 
throughout the nights of summer, whilst the corn is 
ripening in the tiny fields between the steep hill-sides. 
Dense is the forest to right and left for many a lonely 
league, and how many wild boars are hidden in those 
hills and vales of verdure not even the hunters know. 
Wild as they are they like the farmer's fields, and fre- 
quently in the twilight they may be seen venturing 
beyond the edge of the dark forest, and even when the 
moon is high their sombre forms move out upon the 
lighted spaces of the land. In a comparatively limited 
extent of country ninety of them were killed in a single 



WILD BOARS. 143 



season, in fair hunting, with horn and hound. Occa- 
sionally, but rarely, they leave their native forests on 
the hills and explore the fertile populous plain, miles 
from their lonely fastnesses. Only the other day, in 
the burning Burgundy summer, a wild sow and two 
young ones were imprudent enough to come near a 
certain chateau that I know, whose owner is an idle 
man surrounded by dogs and guns. Notwithstanding 
the torrid heat a chase was rapidly organised, and the 
cry of dogs, the galloping of horses, the music of 
echoing horns, resounded over the unaccustomed fields. 
Two days after I called at the same chateau, and the 
master thereof greeted me from the top of his outer 
stair with the grand old royal exultation, ' Hang thyself, 
brave Crillon; we have fought at Arqua, and thou wast 
not there ! ' 

The old French nobility decorated the pursuit of the 
wild boar with a vast deal of external poetry. The 
elaborate and imaginative vocabulary of the hunt, the 
quite peculiar and original music, the picturesque cos- 
tumes, the fanciful names given to the huntsmen, all 
derived from the chase itself or from sylvan nature, 
made the sport of the grand seigneur as much more 
splendid and romantic than the simple killing of a 
beast as is a princely banquet to the plain satisfaction 
of hunger, or the sculptured front of a palace to the 
wall of a Highland hut Never was there a more perfect 
illustration of the philosophy of the superfluous ! Of 
all those complex inventions and arrangements hardly 



i 4 4 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

one was absolutely necessary, yet each had a sort of 
reason for existing, deep in the recesses of the human 
imagination. It was like the ceremonial of a court, or 
of pontifical high mass, where many persons unite to 
produce an effect of collective discipline and grandeur, 
yet of whom the large majority are, like the actors in a 
theatrical army, costumed supernumeraries. It was bar- 
barous, if you will ; but if you take away everything that 
can be called barbarous, how little will be left to look 
upon ! The exact opposite of it may be noticed in the 
matter-of-fact language and habits of English officers 
in India. The intense realism of contemporary English- 
men, their horror of anything like pageantry in action, 
or poetry in expression, produce a disposition the very 
reverse of that which adorns all human enterprise with 
the fanciful embroideries of romance. Instead of riding 
forth in three-cornered hats, in green hunting-suits faced 
with scarlet and gold; insted of encumbering them- 
selves with enormous horns, those practical Englishmen 
go out dressed like jockeys, each with a plain spear ; and 
even the Viceroy himself, lord of an empire tenfold 
greater than the France of Louis XIV., is not to be 
distinguished from the rest. And so far from using 
the picturesque old vocabulary of the chase, they will 
not even use the ordinary language of Englishmen ; they 
reject it, not as too prosaic, but as not being prosaic 
enough. If an art-critic had to speak of a certain 
picture by Snyders, he would call it a boar-hunt, but 
our officers in India call it a pig-sticking. How perfectly 



WILD BOARS. 145 



that paints the strange shyness of the modern English- 
man, depreciating his own exploits and his own foes, 
calling wild boars pigs, and the princes of India niggers, 
and himself a pork-butcher ! 

The irresistible tendencies of the age are stripping 
our life, fast enough, of the little external poetry that 
remains to it, and the feeling of w r istful regret for the 
romantic language and picturesque usages of the past, 
which in Sir Walter Scott produced the characters we 
all know and the fictions we all enjoy, may still pardon- 
ably find a lodging in the hearts of some of us. For 
me, though the actual slaughter of any poor wild thing 
is in itself a sight not pleasurable, I enjoy the princely 
spectacle of the chase. Let the reader imagine — I am 
describing from memory, not from invention — a grand 
old forest chateau standing lonely in the heart of appa- 
rently illimitable woods. It belongs to a famous name 
of the old noblesse, but the master has a palace within 
easier reach of Paris, full of modern luxury, and so this 
old chateau is now a mere rendezvous de chasse. From 
its turrets the Alps are visible over a sea of forest- 
covered hills. The rooms inside are lofty and vast, 
and scantily furnished with a few pathetic-looking old 
things. On the walls of many a chamber 

'Flaps the ghost-like tapestry, 
And on the arras wrought you see 
A stately huntsman, clad in g^een, 
And round him a fresh forest scene. 
On that clear forest knoll he stays 
With his pack round him, and delays ; 

T 



146 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

The wild boar rustles in his lair — 
The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air, 
But lord and hounds keep rooted there,' 

Even so they hunted the boar in the days of Henry IV., 
and to-day again the grass-grown court of the chateau will 
resound with impatient hoofs, and the horns will break 
the solemn silence of the woods. Long before earliest 
dawn the men have been out with lanterns, and the 
mute hounds called limiers, to seek for the track of the 
boar. They have found the track and broken a branch 
and laid it down for an indication. The October mist 
lies in the distant valleys, and many a carriage is rolling 
over the roads that it covers towards the old forest 
chateau. About nine o'clock most of the invited guests 
arrive, the men in hunting costumes, various and pict- 
uresque, the ladies in morning dress. The men mount 
their horses, the ladies get into their carriages, and the 
whole cavalcade moves along one of the many roads in 
the forest. Within a distance of some miles from the 
chateau, in every direction, all these roads are sufficiently 
well kept for driving, and each has its own name in 
white letters on plates of blue enamel, just like the streets 
of Paris. Without this precaution it would be difficult 
to give precise directions. The piqueurs and valets-de- 
cMcjis wear a quaint-looking uniform of blue with gold 
lace, and are mounted on powerful grey horses. It is 
charming to see them pass under the great beech 
avenues near the house, it is a series of complete pictures, 
as sun and shadow fall upon them from mighty trunks 



WILD BOARS. 147 



and through the golden autumn leaves. The French 
painters of scenes of this kind delight especially in the 
valets-de-chiensy who whilst on horseback hold several 
couples of hounds in leash, and when they have to gallop 
need strength and skill to manage both horse and dogs. 
The expression of their faces, and their attitudes in the 
saddle, are enough to prove that the task is not always 
easy. 

Some couples of the best dogs are sent forward to 
rouse the boar, whose whereabouts has been pretty 
accurately ascertained. As soon as any one catches a 
glimpse of him you hear the fanfare on the horns, and 
the chase begins in earnest. Then comes a great deal of 
galloping along the roads, the carriages managing to 
keep up pretty well by taking judicious cuts. Everybody 
gets very much excited, but the chances are that the 
people in the carriages will hardly be in at the death ; 
and even the horsemen may have to dismount and make 
their way on foot into some dense jungle of young trees 
where the enemy stands at bay. The old-fashioned 
method of closing with him at the end was to attack him 
with spears ; and even to this day some bold huntsmen 
go at him with the bare blade of a strong knife or dagger, 
but the more prudent finish him at a safer distance by 
the help of unfair gunpowder. A great old solitary will 
choose the ground for his last fight like some desperate 
outlaw on whose head a price is fixed. He will make 
for some rough place, impenetrable to every other 
creature except the snake and the weasel, some barren 



143 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

stony desolation choked with briars, where the vipers 
breed in peace. His decision made, he turns upon the 
dogs, and then woe to the hound that attacks him ! The 
poor brave dogs come on, and are ripped open one after 
another. An old boar has been seen, in such a position, 
with five dogs killed and twelve lying badly wounded on 
the bloody stones around him. This is the time when 
the hunter has need of all his courage and coolness, and 
all his sylvan skill. The beast weighs between three and 
four hundred pounds, and such is the impression produced 
by his strength and fierceness that the great, grim, 
bristling mass looks twice the size that it is. Once on 
an occasion of this kind, as the dogs were killed one 
after another, and it seemed as though all the pack would 
be successively massacred, the master said reluctantly, 
* Try him with old Rovigo,' an ancient hound of fame, 
used for attack no longer on account of the infirmities of 
age. The dog was fetched to the front, saw with dim 
eyes the monstrous boar surrounded by prostrate 
victims, regained for an instant, like old Sir Henry Lee 
in ' Woodstock, ' the decision and energy of youth, 
fastened on the boar's neck, and hung there till the great 
beast received his death-stroke. But he also, Rovigo, 
had met his fate that hour : his body had been opened 
by the boar's tusk, and whilst he hung on with 
terrible grip his own entrails were dragging along 
the ground. His sorrowing master decreed a sylvan 
law, observed to this day religiously, that whenever 
men met together to hunt the boar upon those lands 



WILD BOARS. 149 



they should solemnly drink to the honoured memory of 
Rovigo. 

Sometimes in this way there occur both tragic and 
ludicrous incidents. The wild boar is dangerous even to 
men ; and brave men, such as the present chief of the 
House of Savoy, take spear and hunting-knife, and dare 
him to single combat in his own fastnesses. If there 
happen to be large thick trees close by, the danger is not 
so great, for an active man may then avoid his charges 
as he would those of an infuriated bull, but when there is 
nothing but brambles the hunter needs all his presence of 
mind. M. de Montcrocq, who was lieutenant dejouveterie 
forty years ago in the department of Saone et Loire, was 
remarkable for his coolness at these moments. His great 
delight was to be charged by the wild boar, and stop 
him in mid-career with a rifle-ball. One of his friends 
tells a story which illustrates the almost incredible cool- 
ness and precision of the man. They were hunting 
together in a country covered with holly and furze, when 
the boar charged M. de Montcrocq, which was exactly what 
that brave gentleman desired. When he considered the 
animal near enough, he fired, and the beast rolled over. 
The huntsman ran to examine him, but could not find 
the ball. M. de Montcrocq, as he walked up at his 
leisure, called out ' You will most likely find it some- 
where near the left eye, as I took aim there/ The ball 
had entered the eye itself. Men of this quality were born to 
hunt noble game, but some others would more prudently 
act upon the advice tendered by Venus to Adonis, — 



i5o CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

1 But if thou needs will hunt, be ruled by me, 

Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, 

Or at the fox, which lives by subtilty, 

Or at the roe, which no encounter dare : 

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs, 

And on thy well breathed horse keep with thy hounds/ 

Let the timid and irresolute remember that description 
of the wild boar which the eloquent Venus gave, — 

' On his bow back he hath a battle set 
Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes ; 
His eyes like glowworms shine when he doth fret j 
His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes ; 
Being moved, he strikes whate"er is in his way, 
And whom he strikes, his cruel tushes slay. 

1 His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed, 
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter; 
His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed ; 
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture : 
The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, 
As fearful of him, part ; through whom he rushes.' 

It is said that too much study of literature and the 
fine arts has a tendency to lower the natural courage of 
man, and weaken the force of his resolution. Perhaps 
the person of whom I am going to narrate a brief but 
authentic history may have read these counsels of 
Shakespeare's Venus, and taken them to heart ; perhaps, 
without being himself an Adonis, he may have seen 
pictures of that lovely youth, whose marble limbs lay 
stiffening in the forest-glade, where the bristly beast had 
torn them. He may have reflected, that, although not 



WILD BOARS. 151 



gifted with that perfect beauty, his limbs were not less 
useful than if they had been cast in a god-like mould, 
and although no divine mistress would ever lament his 
death, he might be wept for by a homely wife. 

The story, a perfectly true one, is as follows : — A 
certain French nobleman, who loved the chase, and 
regularly hunted the boar, became dissatisfied with his 
piqtieur, and discharged him. There were many appli- 
cants for the vacant place, and amongst the rest a 
stranger, who talked so persuasively and so knowingly, 
that he was accepted in preference to men who had 
distinguished themselves in the field. The first day that 
the new huntsman occupied his post, nothing could be 
more satisfactory than his manner, which was that of a 
master of sylvan craft. Evidently he was a man of ex- 
perience and ability in venerie. All went well till the 
boar was brought to bay. This took place in the thick 
forest, and the spectacle was more than usually animated, 
for the boar was a grand old brute, and sold his life 
dearly. After he was slain it suddenly struck the noble- 
man that he had not seen his new piqueur — where could 
he be ? had any accident happened to him ? All present 
asked each other these questions ; when at length Mon- 
sieur le Comte happened to cast his eyes upwards and 
perceived his piqueur in a tree, looking in his gorgeous 
uniform like a very rare bird indeed. The Count im- 
mediately covered him with his gun, and shouted, * Come 
down at once, or I fire ! ' The brave huntsman de- 
scended, and then his master added, ' Now cut for it, and 



1 5 2 CHAP TERS ON ANIMALS. 

look sharp, or you will have a bullet in your back ! ' and 
away went the hunter, boots, cocked hat, gold lace, 
French horn and all, followed by shouts of derision. He 
ran so fast that he was speedily out of sight, and he ran 
so far that they who had been witnesses of his shame be- 
held his face no more. 

A great boar-hunt took place last year in a neighbour- 
hood very well known to me, and the unfortunate chief 
actor therein (not the wild boar) was one of my most 
intimate friends. He had been invited along with many 
others to meet certain princes and other great personages 
who had come hundreds of miles to have a lordly chase, 
in fullest pomp and pride. The day dawned propitiously, 
the ground was admirably chosen, the noblesse were all 
well mounted, the track had been easily found. In the 
midst of the country where the hunt was to take place, 
my friend had a beautiful estate, and there he posted him- 
self with his son, both of them well armed with rifles. A 
man is apt to feel peculiarly at home on his own land, 
and as my friend watched in his own wood, he listened, 
perhaps with too willing and credulous an ear, to the 
advice of his own keeper. ' If any boar were to come 
this way, sir,' said the man, ' you may fire without hesita- 
tion, for the dogs have disturbed more than one, and the 
one that comes here cannot possibly be that which they 
are hunting.' Scarcely had the man uttered these words 
than there was a rush in the dense underwood, and a fine 
boar burst in sight, bearing down upon the little group 
with a rapid and alarming directness. Father and son 



WILD BOJRS. !$3 



fired together, and the brute rolled over, dead. When 
they had examined the wounds, and were congratulating 
each other on this brilliant feat of arms, a great noise 
came nearer and nearer, a sounding of fanfares on many- 
horns, a yelling of dogs, a clattering of hoofs upon the 
turf. Presently the whole hunt was there and surrounded 
my wretched friend, pouring maledictions on his head. 
He had been guilty of worse than murder, he had privily 
slain the beast which was just going to afford brave sport 
to prince and noble. In the rage of their disappointment 
they overwhelmed him with the bitterest abuse, swearing 
at him as only disappointed sportsmen can swear at the 
miserable being that comes between them and the satis- 
faction of their instincts. For the rest of that day, 
and for many subsequent days, he bore in silence 
the burden of a crushing unpopularity. They dragged 
away the carcase of his victim, they did not send 
him one slice, they did not invite him to dinner. 
Alone they left him, to meditate on the enormity of his 
crime ! 

Not only sportsmen, but artists, may regret the 
extinction of the wild boar in Great Britain. There 
is an immense difference, in picturesque interest, be- 
tween a boar-hunt in the Morvan and a fox-hunt in 
Yorkshire or Leicestershire. The animal himself is 
larger, more terrible, and though ugly, is better . ma- 
terial for painting ; the scenery of the hunt is rougher 
and wilder, the costumes are more quaint and pictur- 
esque. Still finer must it be when the bold King Victor 

U 



154 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

Emmanuel meets the boar in the valleys of Piedmont, 
and the grim old lord of the forest succumbs to the 
royal spear, the snowy Alps looking down on him as 
on his fathers for a thousand years. It is barbarous, 
if you will, and satisfies instincts which are a remnant 
of savagery in our nature, but it is nobler to go up to a 
fierce old boar, whose jaws are dripping with blood, 
whose tusk is as dangerous as the horns of a furious bull, 
than to course the timid hare that has no means of harm- 
ing you. * It is not beauty alone which gives power and 
interest to art, sublimity affects us even more. The wild 
boar is not beautiful, but he is sublime in his lonely cour- 
age. The younger boars keep together for safety against 
the wolves, and form into a close phalanx, the smallest 
in the middle, but the old ones live alone, each trusting 
to own cool prowess, and not even the wolf disturbs him. 
When the dogs chase him he goes on without any panic 
fear, turning round occasionally to chastise them, and 
choosing his ground ere long to fight the last hard battle. 

• The Imperial Court of Germany pursues the boar from time to time, 
but the animal is bred in a paddi ck, and turned out to be hunted, be- 
fore which his tusks are purposely broken off, so that he may do no 
manner of harm. If the motive of this is a human care for the dogs, 
which are often ruthlessly sacrifictd in other countries, nothing can be 
more respectable, but it certainly takes away half the dignity of boar- 
hunting by removing the element of danger. It has been observed, indeed* 
during the war in France, that although the Germans showed tbe steadiest 
courage on all occasions when it was really called for, they took the most 
prudent precautions when danger might be reduced or averted beforehand. 
This is laudable in so serious a business as war, which is always perilous 
enough, but in field-sports some danger is necessary to make tbem 
interesting, 



WILD BOARS. J55 



When he dies it is not without honour, and art may 
worthily celebrate his end. 

This gregariousness in youth, and solitude in age, 
might be a text for a disquisition on human society and 
solitude if there were room for it. Association and 
isolation, each at the right time, are good for men as well 
as for wild boars. There is a time to unite ourselves in 
compact companies ; there is a time also — though this is 
less generally admitted — to face in the solemnity of 
solitude the grave problems of life and death. 



• 50 



CHAPTER X. 

WOLVES. 

The extinction of Wolves in England for so man}- cen- 
turies past, has given them, in the popular mind, a sort 
of unreality. The wolf is a great hero of fables, and 
eternally associated, in the dearest recollections of us all, 
with the story of ' Little Red Ridinghood.' The news- 
papers make use of him occasionally for political pur- 
poses ; Prince Bismarck, for example, is not unfrequently 
compared to the celebrated wolf who complained that a 
lamb disturbed the rivulet he drank from, — the lamb in 
these cases being Denmark, or some other small power, 
with which the great Chancellor finds it convenient from 
time to time to have a quarrel Mr. Gladstone, as we all 
know, is a wolf in sheep's clothing ; and even in the 
Church, the controversial papers afhrm that there are 
wolves in sheep's clothing also. So that, notwithstanding 
all the wise precautions of King Egbert, there are wolves 
in England yet ; and especially one very big, and terrible, 
and grim, and pitiless old wolf (old he is, indeed, old as 
humanity, and likely to last till humanity itself perishes), 



WOLVES, 157 



which thousands and thousands of people have the 
greatest difficulty, do what they can, in keeping from the 
door. Keep the wolf from the door, indeed ! What is a 
mere material wolf, going on four legs, to that metapho- 
rical wolf — Destitution, — that envelopes people like an 
awful void and vacuum, in which no human lungs can 
breathe ? This is one of those instances in which the me- 
taphor lowers, instead of enhancing, the effect intended, 
at least, for those to whom the zoological wolf is not an 
unfamiliar visitor. For you may shoot him, or hit him 
with a stone, or give him a kick, but how are you to shoot 
Destitution, or stone or strike that hideous, incorporeal 
spectre ? 

The reader has no doubt often met with wolves in me- 
nageries and zoological gardens, but in England we are 
not under any apprehension about meeting with wolves 
in a state of nature. I cannot say that King Egbert 
rendered an unmixed service to the island by the extinc- 
tion of these animals, for although he tranquillised the 
minds of the inhabitants, he at the same time deprived 
them of a small ingredient of danger which is not with- 
out its charm. When you drive through a French forest 
on a winter's night, the interest of your drive is very 
greatly enhanced by the possibility that a wolf may 
make his appearance in the middle of the road, or that 
two or three of them together may take to pursuing you, 
in which case you may rely upon it that your horses will 
show their speed to the best possible advantage. I remem- 
ber driving one night in France, on the skirts of a forest, 



158 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

a very lively horse indeed, when suddenly he became 
livelier still, — so lively, in fact, that it was scarcely pos- 
sible to hold him, and would not have been possible at 
all had not the road been deeply covered with snow, that 
was still silently and drearily falling. It was between 
midnight and one in the morning, and nothing was in 
sight but the black edge of impenetrable forest, with here 
and there a bit of sedgy morass, and, on the other hand, 
miles of treeless land, all white and untrodden, stretching 
away till it joined the dark grey sky. Whilst endeav- 
ouring to restrain the horse's impatience, I began to have 
a sort of feeling as if our shadows accompanied us on 
that swift course, and yet our lanterns were not lighted 
and there was no moon, nothing but the steady weird 
light from the infinite white fields. I had a lady with me, 
a Frenchwoman, not wanting in courage, and she quickly 
laid her hand on my arm, and said ' Les Lonps /' Yes, 
the two moving shades were a couple of large wolves 
cantering silently in the same direction, and in a line 
strictly parallel with our own course, not pursuing us, but 
keeping steadily in the fields to our left. So we kept on 
for about a league, the horse half mad with fright, and 
galloping as fast as the snow would let him, and still the 
two black creatures to the left of us, keeping up with us 
as it seemed so easily, with that steady silent canter of 
theirs over the thickening snow ! Whether they would 
attack us or not depended simply upon the intensity of 
hunger they might be enduring, and we watched them 
for some minutes with anxiety, but at length we began 



WOLVES. 159 



to imagine that the lines of our courses were no longer 
quite parallel, that the space between us and the wolves 
was gradually widening. Soon afterwards this became a 
certainty : the wolves were going on a mission of their 
own, probably to some sheepfold in the neighbourhood, 
and did not intend to honour us with their attention. 
The parallelism of our lines of route had been merely an 
accident, and our companions grew less and less, till at 
length we could only perceive two tiny black specks that 
seemed almost motionless in the distance, and that no- 
body who had not seen them nearer would have suspected 
to be wolves at all. 

Sometimes, however, the wolves are more to be feared, 
even in France. It seldom happens that a man is in much 
danger from their direct attacks, but there is a great peril 
of a bad carriage-accident when your carriage is pursued 
by wolves. Horses have a perfect horror of these ani- 
mals, and lose their heads entirely on such occasions ; so 
that one has good reason to dread wolves when driving, 
especially if the road is an awkward one. I know a road 
through a forest in the Morvan that I should not quite 
like to drive over at midnight, after a long frost, when 
the wolves are hungry. The forest in that place is about 
nine miles in diameter, and the road, after passing 
through the densest shades, winds along the edge of a 
precipice on a sort of ledge or shelf, which has been 
blasted for it out of the solid granite. 

There is a low parapet on the other side, and when the 
rock juts out towards the abyss the road makes a sudden 



160 CHAPTERS ON JKIMJLS. 

bend outwards also, so that it is rather a dangerous place 
to drive upon even in the best of times. Well, it hap- 
pened one winter's night that a certain man was driving 
over this lonely road through the forest in a sort of gig, 
quite by himself, when his horse suddenly became uncon- 
trollable. The driver found out the cause very shortly, 
for a band of several wolves were in full pursuit. He had 
nothing to do but try to keep from upsetting, and let his 
horse go as fast as mortal terror could impel him. At 
length they came to the precipice, and here there is a rapid 
decline, as the road winds in and out upon the face of the 
cliff. The decline continues for miles, and the horse went 
down it at full gallop. Every time he came to a turn 
there were two imminent dangers, that of a collision with 
the jutting rock on the inside of the curve, and that of 
flying over the low parapet on the outside of it into the 
deep abyss below, where a mountain stream falls amongst 
its rocks in a series of wild cascades. The wolves got 
nearer and nearer, the wheels went faster and faster, 
bounding from the stones in the road as a boy's hoop 
leaps and springs. At length they were out of the forest, 
and the' wolves began to drop gradually behind, a lonely 
hamlet was reached, and the pursuit ceased altogether. 

Very often a wolf sets out by himself on a little ex- 
cursion amongst the 'farms and villages, usually at night, 
occasionally, but rarely, in the day. When he prowls 
about a farm the animals fly in every direction ; if any 
horses are out at grass they leap the hedges with an agility 
that you would never suspect; stiff old cart-horses even 



WOLVES. 161 



will try a jump, and blunder through the hedges some- 
how. As for the sheep, unless secure in a fold, they 
have an anxious time of it, and disperse themselves with- 
out calculating consequences, so that the next day it is 
not easy to get the flock together again, ard if there are 
any streams it is likely enough that you will find a sheep 
.or two drowned in them. When the wolves get into 
the habit of visiting a particular neighbourhood, they 
continue it for several nights almost consecutively, and 
the farmers there become very vigilant, getting all ani- 
mals safely housed at dusk. The wolf comes into the 
farmyard, and the creatures in the buildings round it 
know that he is there, and pass wakeful and anxious 
hours. One night in winter, when there were wolves 
about the farm I live upon when I am in France, I went 
about midnight to the stable, and just on coming out of 
it met a fine wolf face to face. We were not more than 
six or eight feet from each other, and both rather taken 
by surprise. I had no weapon, but remembered the 
tradition that you must never turn your back upon a 
wolf, so I stood still and asked him what he wanted 
there. The sound of a human voice seems to have 
affected the wolf's mind, for he turned round and slinked 
away into the dark shades of a neighbouring wood. The 
morning after I learned that he had killed a goat on the 
next farm. I exactly remember what passed in my 
mind during our brief meeting. ' That's a large dog ; 
no, it is not a dog, it is something else ; what else ? — 
wolf — no weapon — must keep my face to him.' Then 

v 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



a!oud, * Well, sir, what do you want here ? ' On which 
he looked steadfastly at me for a second or two without 
stirring, then made a rapid right-about-face and cantered 
woodwards in perfect silence. 

This meeting was rather a surprise, but a surprise of a 
still more startling kind happened to an old woman who 
was walking through a lonely wood. She felt two paws 
on her shoulders, and on turning round (which we may 
be sure the old woman did sharply enough) found that it 
was a very big wolf who had a talent for practical joking. 
After this the wolf followed her, quite closely, till she got 
out of the wood, and then left her, without doins: her the 
least harm in any way. Now, although the pleasantry 
of laying two heavy paws in a startling manner upon an 
old lady's unexpecting shoulders cannot be considered 
in good taste, still we must make allowances for a face- 
tious animal that could not express his facetiousness by 
language ; and the perfect politeness with which he after- 
wards escorted the victim of his joke, though no doubt 
she would willingly have dispensed with his attendance, 
proved, I think, on the wolfs part, a degree of natural 
courtesy remarkable in a creature who could never have 
been much in the society of ladies. 

In all these anecdotes which I have just been telling, 
the reader may have observed one common characteris- 
tic that nobody comes to any harm, and so it is in the 
vast majority of such instances. Wolves are not danger- 
ous to man, except in bands and maddened by intoler- 
able hunger. When the wolf appears in the day-time 



WOLVES. 163 



amongst the flocks of the Morvan villages, a vigorous 
young shepherdess will even go and kick him with her 
wooden shoes, and the lads, instead of running away, 
pelt him heartily with stones. The wolf in England, 
where he is seen in menageries, like a savage panther 
behind strong bars of iron, enjoys a much more imposing 
reputation than in France, where he is more familiarly 
known. Indeed the word wolf and the word loup do not 
convey the same impression to my mind, because ' wolf/ 
to me, is associated with the grand mystic conception of 
the animal, whereas loup is associated with the simple 
reality. 

When a peasant can catch a wolf alive it is a source 
of profit, as it is the custom, in all the farm-houses he 
chooses to visit, to make him a small present. A man 
addicted to poaching, a clever trapper, managed to 
catch two wolves, and brought them to my house. 
They were of course very securely muzzled and chained, 
and cowed by what newspaper reporters would call ' a 
sense of their position ; ' but after making all deductions 
on that account I could not help thinking that for ani- 
mals so celebrated in fable they cut but a poor figure. 
I was curious to see how my dog would behave in their 
presence, and called him. His conduct was admirable, 
he showed no more emotion than Sir John Malcolm 
did when he passed the Persian giant, whom he took 
for a painted representation of Roostem and his club, 
but passed close to the wolves with a mere glance at 
them and then lay down at my feet whence he contem- 



164 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

plated them at his leisure. On comparing the dog and 
the larger of the two wolves, I perceived that Tom was 
certainly the heavier and apparently the more powerful 
animal of the two ; and it is my belief that in a combat, 
unless the wolf gained at first a decisive advantage from 
that instantaneous ferocity of attack which wild crea- 
tures usually have in a superior degree, Tom would have 
had the advantage. According to Toussenel, however, 
who was an experienced hunter, dogs have a great objec- 
tion to fight the wolf, and the best wolf-hound in the 
world will give in promptly when he is wounded. A 
famous wolf of the department of Saone-et- Loire which 
had lived in a forest near Cluny, and was known in the 
neighbourhood by a name, for the hunters called him 
Cambronne, would issue from his retreat when hunted 
and break a leg of each of the hounds with an astonish- 
ing rapidity. So at last it was decided to conclude a 
treaty of peace with Cambronne, and the hunters dis- 
turbed him no more. He met his death in a most strange 
manner. One day he was swimming in the river Saone 
when one of those long steamers that ply upon it over- 
took him and killed him with a stroke of the paddle. 
When the body was taken out of the water it was recog- 
nised as that of Cambronne. As to the strength of wolves, 
Toussenel says that he himself saw two wolves drag the 
body of a large mare, which weighed at least seven 
hundred pounds, out of a muddy marsh with sloping 
sides. They got it up somehow upon the dry ground 
above, and in three hours had eaten half of it. When 



WOLVES. 165 



you consider the size of the wolf, both these facts would 
be incredible if we had not the authority of a careful per- 
sonal observer who took the greatest interest in the habits 
of animals. Supposing that the wolves weighed a hundred 
pounds each, their united weight would be two hundred 
pounds, and they ate nearly twice that weight of horse- 
flesh in three hours. It appears, however, that they can 
reject their food at will, and in that way enjoy a glutto- 
nous interminable banquet like Heliogabalus. The other 
fact that they drew the mare out of the marsh can be 
explained by nothing but vast muscular force and great 
skill in applying it. 

The character and habits of the wolf have been care- 
fully studied by many observers, who agree in admit- 
ting his craft and intelligence, though some of them doubt 
his courage. Toussenel tells us that he himself saw six 
full-grown wolves crossing the frozen Loire, in single file, 
in the winter of 1829, that he examined their track after- 
wards, and would have supposed, if he had not seen six 
wolves, that only^one animal had crossed the river in 
that place, so accurately had the five others placed their 
paws in the foot-prints of the first. The wolf is so suspi- 
cious that it is almost impossible to poison him. If you 
place a poisoned carcase near his own residence he will 
not touch it, the only way to get him to eat of it is to 
drag it a long distance so as to make a trail, and then 
seem as if you had been anxious to hide it. He will 
follow the trail at night and find the carcase. A common 
way is to lie in wait for him with rifles round about the 



i 5 5 Gffiff 7£* 5 ON ANIMALS. 

spot where the carcase is, and then pour a converging 
fire upon him the moment of his arrival. Notwithstanding 
the most intense hunger he will not eat of any tiling that 
seems to him suspicious, he will devour earth itself first 
The same prudence marks his conduct in all respects he 
will not uselessly expose himself, yet he is not a coward. 
Like all robbers he enjoys foggy weather, considering it 
to be favourable to his operations, in which he resembles 
a well-known London thief, whose most audacious fear 
was the successful robbery of a twelfth-cake from a con- 
fectioner's shop, under cover of a London fog. It is well 
known that a farm which is close to the wolfs private 
residence is safer than one situated at a distance of a few 
miles, as he thinks it best to avoid scandal in his : vi 
neighbourhood, just as young gentlemen conduct them- 
selves very properly when at home in the country who 
are not always quite so good in London or Paris. The 
wolf knows too, very well, who are his active enemies, 
and who are the people whom, though not friendly, he 
can afford to regard with indifference. An instance is on 
record of a wolf which, quietly seated on a little eminence, 
watched the long line of peasants' carts going to market 
along the highroad close to where he was. The long 
procession amused him, just as it amuses an old lady 
sitting by her window, and no doubt he made his own 
philosophic reflections on a kind of life from which cir- 
cumstances had excluded him. Hundreds of anecdotes 
might be collected in proof of the wolFs exceeding intel- 
ligence in all that concerns the preservation of his life, 



WOLVES. 167 



and every hunt supplies fresh examples. A family of 
young wolves, instructed by their mother, will mislead 
the hunters artfully, taking the dangerous duty by turns 
for the protection of the rest. But when a strong, full- 
grown animal gets fairly away, out of the ring of beaters, 
his policy is simple in the extreme. He chooses a 
straight line, and sticks to it across all obstacles with 
uncompromising rectitude, and the worse the ground the 
safer he is, for then the distance rapidly widens between 
him and his pursuers. When the hunters are far behind 
the wolf relaxes his pace to a quiet trot, and finally takes 
a rest, not troubling himself much if one or two of the 
foremost dogs reach him, for he will give them a sharp 
bite or two that will deprive them of any wish to vex 
him again. It is generally agreed in France that it is 
not of much use to follow a wolf with dogs alone, on the 
principle of English fox-hunting, so the hunters are 
armed with rifles, and if the wolf is killed at all, which 
does not happen in every hunt, a bullet is the invariable 
cause of death. But then in France they have not the 
true wolf-hound. In Russia and Poland they have better 
dogs very likely, but on this point I am not able to inform 
the reader, not having been in Russia. 

It happens from time to time that an attempt is made 
to bring up a wolf like a dog. These attempts succeed 
up to a certain point. One of the most remarkable 
instances occurred in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, 
where a grand veneur brought up a black wolf-cub, a 
bitch, along with his young dogs, in perfect liberty. She 



168 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

went out hunting with the dogs, and enjoyed the chase 
extremely, except when the purpose of the expedition 
was a wolf-hunt, to which she had honourable objections. 
She behaved charmingly in the kennel, and her only 
fault was sheep-killing, a crime she committed whenever 
the opportunity offered. A tamer of wild animals 
(Martin) harnessed a pair of French wolves to a carriage, 
and they behaved well when the voice only was 'used to 
command them, but when they heard the whip they 
snapped at each other with their teeth, and it appears 
that the sledge- dogs in the Arctic regions have the same 
characteristic. Indeed, it appears doubtful whether 
those animals, although we call them dogs, are not in 
reality a species of wolf. They do not bark, and 
according to Captain Parry their anatomy is exactly 
that of the wolf. This suddenness in snapping at each 
other under the belief that the whip stroke is a hostile 
attack on the part of their companion is strictly a wolfish 
characteristic. I have observed hybrids which were 
descended from an union of dog and wolf which it was 
most dangerous to caress on account of the suddenness 
with which they would use their teeth on the least suspi- 
cion of your intentions. 

Though the wolf is a robber, and we do oir best to 
prevent him from injuring the domesticated animals 
which belong to us and contribute to our wealth, it 
would be difficult for any just person not to have a 
feeling ot great sympathy for him. The wolf in modern 
Europe, the last of the wild beasts dangerous to the 



WOLVES. 169 



larger animals and to man, is in a position as false as 
that of a baron of the Middle Ages would be if he could 
come back again to his castle in the middle of modern 
Germany. After all, the wolf has but one real fault, 
that of being a carnivorous animal, appreciating mutton, 
and unfortunately neither having money nor knowing 
the use of it, he is unable to go to the butcher as we 
do. Compare with him, for instance, the most refined 
and delicate of God's creatures, — a pretty young lady 
with a good healthy appetite, and no convictions on 
the subject of vegetarianism. She eats mutton, too, 
and many other kinds of animal food, only she eats 
them prettily with a knife and fork, and the mutton, 
&c, have been bought at a shop, already slaughtered 
for her use. The wolf has an appetite even yet more 
vigorous, and scarcely any legal means of satisfying it. 
He has no money, he has no profession, like the dog, by 
which to earn a respectable existence. When the long, 
terrible winter comes, he can only live by robbery, and 
can we blame him if he satisfies an imperious appetite, 
an appetite of an intensity probably unknown to any of 
us ? He has to be his own butcher, and to snatch his 
prey from the hands of his deadliest enemies. In 
managing this he gives proof of infinite address, and a 
kind of prudent boldness which is the wisest policy for a 
creature in his situation. If he behaves distrustfully to 
man, has he not ample reason ? What have men ever 
done for him or his race ? Have they not hunted and 
persecuted him since the world began, stamped him out 

W 



i7o . CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

of existence in England, and in the rest of Europe driven 
him into the hungry wilderness ? Fortunately for him 
he has the instincts of association, and so does not live 
utterly in solitude. 

We have all of us read of those terrible occurrences in 
Russia when a pack of wolves pursue a sledge as harriers 
follow a hare. It is in scenes of that kind that the animal 
becomes truly terrible. There was a real battle between 
men and wolves in Russia in the year 1812, and the 
wolves gained an unquestionable victory, for they killed 
every one of their enemies, neither giving nor receiving 
quarter. On the field of battle after the combat there 
lay eighty human corpses, soldiers, their muskets strewn 
upon the snow, their bayonets red with blood, and round 
them a ring of two hundred wolves that they had 
slaughtered. I think that battle must have been the 
grandest to witness that human soldiers ever fought 
Fancy it raging in the depth of that Muscovite solitude, 
man and beast — man and beast — man and beast in 
mortal combat, till the men had all fallen except ten, 
till of these ten there remained only five, three, two, one, 
and that last one fighting alone for the last minutes of 
his doomed existence, — alone with his seventy-nine com- 
rades serving for a horrible repast around him, and the 
irresistible wolf-army howling, and leaping, and gnashing 
innumerable teeth ! 

In France there is little danger of such tragic events 
as this. There are really not very many wolves in 
France, certainly not enough to make dangerously large 



WOLVES. 



bands. M. d'Esterno calculates (on very certain data, 
since a reward is given for every wolf that is killed, 
and accounts are kept of these rewards) that i860 
wolves are killed every year in the whole country. Of 
these, 820 are cubs, and even the young adolescents (in 
French, louvards) are counted as old wolves, so that the 
Teal old wolves are not probably more than 300. After 
a calculation of probabilities with which I need not 
trouble the reader, M. d'Esterno arrives at the conclusion 
that the total number of births in the wolf- tribe in France 
in the course of one year, can scarcely exceed 3000. 
Now, since the area of France exceeds 200,000 square 
miles, one wolf is born every year in sixty-seven square 
miles of territory, which is not an alarming lupine po- 
pulation. Indeed, the wolf would be extinct in France 
already, were it not for an institution which was especially 
created for his destruction, but which has ended in his 
preservation. Certain gentlemen of fortune are appointed 
louvetiers (wolf-hunters), and the royal authority, which 
first instituted them, was supposed by loyal fiction to 
intervene for the protection of the peasant against a 
noxious animal. However, the fact is, that the louvetiers 
look upon a wolf precisely as an English gentleman in 
Leicestershire looks upon a fox. The administration of 
woods and forests, too, is favourable to the preservation 
of the wolf, because a forest lets better for shooting when 
wolves are known to exist in it ; and a powerful admin- 
istration of that kind has many means of influence. If 
a louvetier were to take his occupation seriously, and 



72 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



really try to exterminate the wolves, he would find him- 
self hampered at every turn by a set of rules contrived 
for that special purpose. It is settled, for example, that 
a louvetier can only hunt in his own district, and that 
when he hunts in woods belonging to anybody else he 
can only do it on a day fixed beforehand, for which he 
requires a special permission from the prefect of his 
department The chase, too, must be conducted in the 
presence of foresters and gendarmes. All these con- 
trivances ensure the safety of the old wolves, which easily 
get out of the limits fixed, and have dye notice, as they 
are not hunted when first discovered, and there can be 
little doubt that the whole official organisation is strictly 
wolf- conservative. If we had wolves in England, and 
were accustomed to the exciting sport which they afford, 
it is likely that we also should have an influential party 
in favour of their preservation. 

I regret to have had so little to say in this paper 
concerning the wolf in fine art, but the fact is that with 
the exception of the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and 
Remus, of which an antique statue remains to us, and 
the wolves in great hunting-pieces in painting and 
tapestry suitable for the decoration of country-houses, 
the animal has not figured very largely either in paint- 
ing or sculpture, and is not generally very intimately 
known to artists. English painters see him at the Zoo- 
logical Gardens, Continental ones occasionally have the 
advantage of seeing him in his native forests, but only 
by glimpses. He is more useful in poetry than in paint- 



WOLVES. 173 



ing, because when skilfully introduced in verse, he may be 
made to give very powerful effects of savage wildness. The 
association of his dreaded name with hungry solitudes, 
covered with inhospitable snow, with the desperation 
of flying steeds, with uncounted quantity of pitiless pur- 
suers, makes it enough simply to mention him at the 
right time to enhance a poetical effect very cleverly ; 
whilst such is the tradition of his fame that when your 
horse breaks into a wild gallop at wintry midnight, and 
your companion points to the next field and whispers, 
' The wolves !' and you see them dimly in the pale snow- 
light, there comes a thrill, not so much of fear as of an old 
poetry that has descended to you through all the gene- 
rations of our race. 



174 



CHAPTER XI. 

KIDS. 

EVER since men began to observe the ways of animals, 
and this is going very far back into the past, for mankind 
has loved and studied animals from its earliest infancy, 
tfiey have recognised some marked moral characteristics 
as belonging in quite a special sense to each of the species 
which they knew. In the old fables which have come 
down to us through various transformations, the animals 
are, as it were, so many well-known characters in a little 
drama, each character being strongly marked by one of 
two striking traits which are never forgotten, and which 
universal consent has accepted as typically accurate. In 
the mediaeval fable this dramatic arrangement of the 
animals most familiar to the people of Western Europe 
takes its most clear and perfect form. The animals 
become, severally, personages with names, and a style 
suitable to their supposed rank in the animal hierarchy. 
Neither the narrators of mediaeval fable, nor their hearers, 
seem to have imagined the possible objection that 
there might be a variety of character amongst animals of 



KIDS. 175 



one species. They simply took the species as a whole, 
fixed upon one salient characteristic, and gave this salient 
characteristic as the whole nature of the typical bear, or 
fox, or cat, who became Monsieur Berenger, or Maitre 
Renard, or Madame Tibert Then with the characters 
obtained by this process, they made up their little play, 
which had the immense advantage of simple dramatis 
personcz, easily remembered, each strikingly unlike every 
other, and, therefore, easily grasped by the popular intel- 
ligence and retained by the popular memory. 

Now, this way of estimating the characters of animals 
is not a bad way to begin with, but it is altogether rudi- 
mentary. It is true, to a certain extent, that every animal 
is marked by some one of those characteristics which are 
to be found in the manifold nature of man ; but no one 
who had studied animals could be entirely satisfied with 
such a rough indication of one salient attribute as a de- 
scription of animal character. For example, in popular 
fable and tradition, the unlucky goat always stands for 
uncleanness, on account of an unfortunate musk-like 
odour, extremely powerful, and to us certainly most 
disagreeable, but which may be tolerable enough to or- 
gans differently constituted. This is man's way of settling 
the position of his fellow- creatures ; he dislikes the smell 
of the goat, and accuses the animal of exceptional impu- 
rity, which accusation is otherwise utterly unfounded. It 
is to be regretted that we cannot learn the goat's opinion 
concerning the odour of man, for there is no doubt that 
man has a very strong odour, and one which is most 



76 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



offensive to many animals. It has been remarked farther, 
by naturalists, that this odour is not diminished by clean- 
liness, but is inherent in man's very constitution. I think, 
then, that this question of odour, as affecting the charac- 
ter of the goat, had better be left out of our calculations 
altogether, for there is nothing positive about an odour ; 
it is merely a matter of relation between our olfactory 
nerves and the fine floating particles which excite them. 
The scent of carrion is unpleasant to me, but it is cer- 
tainly not unpleasant to my dog ; and he is quite as good 
a judge as I am, nay, probably even by far the better 
judge of the two, for his sense of scent is incomparably 
more exquisite, more true, more critical, more refined, 
and more reliable than mine. He can follow me through 
fields and woods, across a thousand contradictory scents, 
by the sole guidance of his nose ; and I could not follow 
him a single yard by the help of my nose. Let us, there- 
fore, learn a certain modesty in judging of other beings, 
which, though so near to us, and so much beneath us as 
it seems, and so entirely in our power, live in truth in so 
many different worlds. The goat lives in goat- world, the 
dog lives in dog- world, the donkey in donkey-world. 
What I should like to do for myself and the reader, if it 
were possible, would be to get a true glimpse or two of 
each of these strange worlds, so different from ours, and 
so difficult for the wisest of us to understand. 

Thackeray used to contemn the indifference of certain 
wealthy families (who in this differed most widely from 
the lady who is the head of English society) for every- 






KIDS. ill 



thing that concerned their servants. Not to know, or care 
anything about the poor people who live under our roofs, 
and do our work for us, and spare us every day a thou- 
sand annoyances, hindrances, and delays; making life quite 
smooth and easy for us, so that we have leisure both for 
study and for amusement ; not to know or care anything 
about these people, to whose faithful service we owe so 
much (and we are often ignorant even of their very 
names), seemed to Thackeray a sort of plague-spot in our 
society, and a grievous scandal and wrong. In the same 
way I have often thought, whilst noticing the stupid and 
cruel way in which animals are treated ; the almost con- 
stant habit of using them merely as things, and not as if 
they had the feelings and characters of individual beings, 
that we have other servants besides human ones, who 
deserve more consideration than they get. 

Of goats in their maturity we shall have something to 
say in another chapter, but for the present I content 
myself with speaking of them in their infancy or kidhood. 
The main characteristic of the kid, considered indivi- 
dually, is his very remarkable precocity, and the surpris- 
ing readiness with which he adapts himself to his new 
situation, and acquires the knowledge necessary to it. 
Early on some April morning, let us suppose, he finds 
his way into the world, just as the sun is beginning to 
drink the dew from the early flowers. For the first quarter 
of an hour he is uncomfortable enough, and looks, as he 
lies on the ground, from right to left in an unsteady and 
uncertain manner, his general appearance reminding one of 



178 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

a half- drowned rat still giddy from the effects of asphyxia. 
After a while, however, he gets up and tries to walk 
about a little ; at first not elegantly, but somewhat after 
the manner of a school-boy upon stilts. For the moment 
the poor kid is a type of weakness aud inexperience ; he 
staggers about like a kid inebriated, and hits his muzzle 
against any obstacle that may come in his way. He 
rapidly, however, in kid-fashion, acquires the precious 
science of perspective, and sufficiently explains to him- 
self what those marvellous patches of colour all about him 
stand for. Very soon, of course, by the infallible instinct 
of nature, he finds his way to the maternal teat, and gets 
his first long, refreshing, strengthening draught of milk. 
The good that first drink does to a young kid is magical. 
After it he makes his first caper — the first of ten thou- 
sand capers — and becomes a new being. He begins to 
explore things, to wander about his mother's legs, which 
at first appear to him only in the light of pillars support- 
ing a great milk-cistern, and to make acquaintance with 
his brothers or sisters, if he has any. 

And now begins that beautiful fraternal life of the 
young kid, than which nothing in nature is more lovely. 
Suppose a litter of three kids all together. Of all types 
of tender brotherhood and sisterhood I think they are 
the most perfect. I knew a Scotchman who always called 
his children his kids, which, I believe, is not an uncom- 
mon practice in the south of Scotland and in Ireland ; 
and since I have become more familiar with the ways of 
animals, the idea of kid life seems to me not at all a bad 



KIDS. 179 

one to set before young children. With all the eloquence 
of gesture, and of the most beautiful grouping possible, 
three kids of the same litter continually express the ful- 
ness of fraternal affection. Why they love each other so 
very dearly, and as soon as they first really see each 
other, is one of the divine mysteries of the instincts, but 
it is so ; there is no doubt or question about it. Their 
life is a sweet alternation of play and rest, play and rest, 
play together and rest together ; nor can play more 
joyous, or rest more perfect, be found in all the realm of 
nature. 

In their grouping, merely from the instinct of imitation, 
and, of course, without the slightest intention or con- 
scious preference, they constantly arrange themselves with 
a wonderful and beautiful symmetry. If there are two 
kids, one puts himself in a certain position, looking, let 
us say, from the left of the spectator to his right ; in this 
case the other is pretty sure to come and put himself 
exactly in the same attitude, but looking from right to 
left. If there are three kids, the third will make a centre- 
piece of himself, whilst the two others group instinctively 
as symmetrical supports. I have seen a hundred na- 
tural groupings of this kind invented by three kids which 
belonged to me last year, all of which were quite sym- 
metrical enough in arrangement for the severest Greek 
ornamentation, and yet perfectly free and natural at the 
same time. Not even the most studied arrangements of 
the dance exhibit combinations more gracefully and 
artistically perfect. 



180 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

Like all young things, kids are extremely inquisitive, 
and whenever one of them thinks it has made a discovery, 
the others always immediately determine to find out all 
about the new subject of interest In my goat-house 
there is a hay-rack, placed low enough to be conven- 
iently accessible for the full-grown animals, but rather 
high for young kids who are supposed to be nurtured on 
the maternal milk. One of the kids, in the spirit of ex- 
ploration which characterises them, put its fore-paws 
against the wall, and got its head level with the bottom 
of the rack ; on which another, desiring to imitate the 
first, in exactly the same place, could only manage it by 
getting on his brother's back. The same desire took 
possession of their sister, wha got upon the back of 
number two. It is evident that only the first of the 
three could reach the hay, so that the two others re- 
mained in a state of unavailing aspiration. They reminded 
me of the consequence of imitation in literature and the 
fine arts. An original artist has access for himself to 
nature, but his imitators think to get at the hay by climb- 
ing upon his back, which is just the way not to get at 
it There is plenty of it to right and left, if they would 
go to it for themselves. 

Sometimes the experiments made by a set of inqui- 
sitive kids must of necessity be successive. For example, 
if there is a basket in the place which will hold one of 
them, and no more, the others watch him with great 
interest; and as soon as he jumps out (which he is never 
very long in doing), the others inevitably jump in and 



KIDS. 181 



out again by turns. A game of this kind will last till 
one of the kids has a new suggestion to make, which his 
brethren are sure to adopt ; for they are always very 
ready in adopting any suggestion which promises a va- 
riety in their amusements. It became the fashion one day 
amongst my kids to carry a little sprig of green between 
the lips ; and a very pretty fashion it was, from a painter's 
point of view, as it supplied a most refreshing touch of 
colour amongst the blacks and greys. There is a certain 
impudence and fearlessness about kids which is often both 
laughable and charming. One day, whilst I was at work 
sketching, the kids took it into their heads to try to upset 
my seat by getting under it, and lifting me up with their 
not very Samson-like shoulders. This they tried in turn ; 
but, not being powerful enough to succeed, turned their 
attention to my great dog, who lay by me contemplating 
their gambols with a sort of half tolerance mingled with 
disdain. First one kid came up to Tom, and brought 
his tiny visage in contact with Tom's astonished physi- 
ognomy ; then another tried the same experiment ; and 
finally, of course, the third tried it. At last the dog's 
dignity could stand it no longer, and he rushed out of the 
place, not trusting himself to refrain from using his mighty 
jaws, which would have crushed a kid's head like a nut- 
shell. 

Most young things (young crocodiles and some other 
reptiles excepted) appear to be reservoirs of pent-up 
natural energy that finds vent in irrepressible gambols. 
Of all active young creatures intimately known to me, 



1 82 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

kids are the most active. When they seem to be per- 
fectly still and reasonable, a spring is touched, and they 
bound straight up as if the earth had suddenly become 
elastic and thrown them towards the sky like projectiles. 
They pass from moods of venturesome and reckless frolic 
to moods of extreme caution. When in the latter, they 
studiously examine some object in the place where they 
are confined; and the boldest of them approaches it first, 
ready, however, to withdraw upon any appearance of 
danger. The others follow behind, at regular intervals. 
In all this they are doing in play what they will have to 
do in earnest in after-life. The gambols prepare them 
for the bold leaping amongst rocks and precipices, whilst 
the ec/aireurworU prepares them for the duty of a prudent 
sentinel when the wolves are near in the mysterious and 
deceptive moonlight. 

If kids compose beautifully in action, I think they do 
so still more beautifully in repose. The expression of 
fraternal trust and affection is strongest, by far, in their 
moments of perfect rest. They lay their heads upon 
each other's bodies, as upon pillows, and pass in an in- 
stant to the land of innocent dreams ; where, no doubt, 
they play over again, in fancy, the wild gambols that 
have brought them this sweet weariness. The attitudes 
of rest are varied beyond all imagination of painter or of 
po?t, and often quaintly original to a degree which no 
invention could suggest. What they express most com- 
monly is mutuality, the interchange of the same offices of 
kindness and perfect trust Kids have a way of compos- 



KIDS. 183 

ing themselves symmetrically in repose as they have in 
active recreation, so that the designers of classic panels 
for some sylvan temple or retreat would have little else 
to do than to copy their natural groupings in order to pro- 
duce works quite in harmony with the symmetrical classic 
taste. The heads have an inevitable way of clustering 
together, and the throat of one kid is always sure to lie 
aero 3 the neck of another. If there are three, the heads 
often make three steps from the ground upwards ; one 
lying on the ground itself, the other two rising behind it, 
something like the heads of clerk, curate, and preacher, 
in an old-fashioned English church. 

In conclusion, I should say that kids are typical of two 
things mainly, innocent ^gaiety and fraternal, affection. 
One is accustomed to consider them pretty, and no doubt 
they produce on the mind a complex effect which we call 
prettiness, but it would be difficult to prove to any one 
who did not love them that they possessed the attributes 
of beauty. Few young animals are really beautiful, 
though most of them are extremely interesting. Beauty 
appears to have been reserved for the perfected form, 
whilst the immature form has to be satisfied with a sort 
of hint of it, or approximation to it. The head of the 
kid is more beautiful than that of the mature animal, but 
its body is, in truth, very ungainly. I have never seen 
this ungainliness more strikingly exemplified than when 
young kids tried to stand on a waxed floor, as slippery 
as ice ; but this awkwardness has a certain charm, and 
attaches us to young animals by its expression of weak- 



CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



ness, immaturity, and imperfection. Much of the imper- 
fection in the form of kids is compensated for, or dis- 
guised by beautiful markings in the colouring of the hair. 
No animal affords finer studies of black and white, varie- 
gated by delicate warm and cold greys. Lines of white 
are often sharply reserved, especially down each side 
of the face, and on other parts of the body there are 
fanciful patches, or soft gradations of a kind often quite 
as delightful to a painter as the beautiful markings of 
creatures much more elegantly constructed. And although 
a kid is decidedly not elegant in" form, it is quite as much 
so as a foal even of the most distinguished race. In both 
these animals the only really beautiful part is the head, 
and we accept the rest with a sort of hopeful indulgence, 
with which is mingled not a little tenderness of affection 
like that we have for the imperfect language of young 
children. The heads of kids often remind us of the beau- 
tiful heads of deer. There is a sweetness, a refinement 
about them which disappears later ; besides which the 
head of a kid is more intelligent than that of the mature 
animal, the forehead is larger in proportion, and the eyes, 
though not so brilliant and decided in their colouring, are 
better placed, and have not that vacant expression they 
often acquire in maturity. The extreme mobility of the 
ears, which are often extremely beautiful both in shape 
and texture, and lined with a delicate fur, adds greatly 
to the liveliness of the expression. Kids have a sharp, 
wide-awake look, which not unfrequently degenerates 
into blank stupidity in the mature animal. The same 



KIDS. 185 



thing may be observed sometimes in the human race ; 
amongst the heavy, stolid races of mankind the children 
seem more intelligent than their parents, but gradually 
lose this intelligence (which is mere liveliness) as they 
grow older, duller, and less easily moved or awakened. 
It would be easy to criticise the kid's mouth, and if any 
one chose to affirm that the projections of the lower jaw, 
and the flattening about the nostrils, were ungraceful, it 
would be in vain to argue the point ; yet in this, as in so 
many other things, nature produces a pretty and harmo- 
nious whole by parts which, taken separately, are not 
absolutely in accordance with our preconceived notions 
of beauty. I think it might be argued, however, that the 
delicately cut openings of the nostrils themselves and the 
sharp line between them, and the projected curve of the 
lip, are beautiful, at any rate in the best examples. 

If you pass from the head to the body you can scarcely 
fail to admire the fawn-like beauty of the neck, and a fine 
curve in it often seen from behind. In the mature animal 
the neck becomes more nearly horizontal, and much less 
graceful, so that the head is not carried so elegantly, 
There is a mixture of elegance and pride (if so utterly 
innocent a creature as a kid could feel anything like 
pride) in the way' it holds its head, especially in the atti- 
tude of attention ; and much of this is due to the position 
of the neck, often nearly vertical, with a sharp little curve 
where it joins the skull, which gives a valuable accent in 
a drawing. The body has no beauty of form, it is too 
thin for that ; and the legs are mere stilts, as awkward as 

Y 



1 86 CHAP TER S OX JXIMJLS. 

legs can be ; but we forget these deficiencies entirely for 
the sake of the exquisite naivete which marks every 
movement of the creature, and which attaches us to it 
from the first No one who has the genuine love of ani- 
mals can resist the attractiveness of kids; and when 
once you love them their shapelessness is utterly forgotten. 
You may prove that they are ugly by logic, but you feel 
that they are lovable and delightful, and by a common 
confusion you say that they are beautiful And in the 
strictest truth they are beautiful ; not, however, with the 
beauty which a designer or a sculptor specially cares for, 
but with that which a painter loves. The goat, in all the 
stages of his existence, is especially a painter's animal. 
No creature surpasses him in the pictorial beauty of his 
hair. For sharp and brilliant contrasts, fine markings, 
soft gradations, rich varieties of warm and cold greys, the 
covering of the goat incomparably surpasses that of every 
other domestic animal, whilst its texture is tempting in 
the extreme. In kids you have all this beauty with a 
freshness and newness which is their own. As there is a 
perfection of unspoiled newness in the thin, rosy, delica- 
tely marked skin of a baby's fingers, so the kid possesses 
j. fur quite fresh from the stores of Nature, with the curve 
of every hair in crisp perfection, exactly in its right place. 
How snowy the white is ! how intensely sable the black ! 
how delicately opportune the sprinkling of badger-like 
greys ! how fine the thin pencillings where the hair is 
glossy and dose ! how full and rich the shadowy colour 
•where it is tufted ! 



KIDS. 187 

I have not space to say much about kids and the 
poets ; but it is clear that the poets have always loved 
them, and spoken of them tenderly as amongst the most 
innocent and happy things in the sylvan and pastoral 
world. The gods loved kids, too, but in a manner which 
perpetually led to their death on the altar by the hand of 
some sacrificing priest. How could he bear, I wonder, to 
see the warm, innocent blood trickling red over the 
altar's edge ? The most innocent things were ever 
chosen to propitiate the angry gods, and bear the load of 
human iniquity — not fierce wolves, nor cunning foxes, 
nor serpents with poisonous fangs, but tender-hearted, 
faithful doves, and pure white lambs, and playful, 
fraternal kids. 

I think there ought to be, in every house where there 
are children, some picture or print representing young 
kids nestling close to each other, their heads reposing on 
each other, in that sweet peace of their mutual tender- 
ness and trust. We English people have been accused 
of having weaker fraternal feeling than any other race ; 
and it is said that the feeling, weak as it is already, is 
becoming feebler still by a gradual atrophy and decline. 
If this is so, the fact is a melancholy one, and we need a 
lesson from the kids. Liberty and equality may be 
unattainable dreams, but we may realise fraternity. 



188 



CHAPTER XII. 

OTHER ANIMALS. 

I INTEND, in this short chapter, to say a few words about 
the animals of which I know or care least. There are 
sheep and goats, for instance, of which I know a good 
deal from long ownership, yet never cared very much ; 
and there are foxes and otters, which would both be very 
interesting studies, but, as it happens, I never had proper 
opportunities for studying them. The reader is requested 
to remember, that in writing these cursory chapters I 
have never pretended to anything like completeness, but 
have merely talked in a desultory way about a few 
familiar creatures that had happened to come within the 
very limited range of my own personal observation. 

A very experienced picture-dealer told me that, so far 
as his experience went (picture-dealers take note of these 
things), the most popular of all animals in rustic pictures 
was the sheep. Rabelais would no doubt have given 
an explanation of this in his own uncomplimentary 
way. Rabelais would have said that people like what 
resembles themselves, and that as mankind are moutoiis 
de Panurge, they like moutons from sympathy and simi- 



OTHER ANIMALS. 



lai ity of nature. If it were possible to examine all the 
people who take pleasure in sheep-pictures, and all the 
other people who feel indifferent to them, very possibly 
it might be found that the fondness for sheep was asso- 
ciated with a certain instinct of gregariousness, and that 
the indifference to them on the other hand prevailed 
most amongst people who are apt to be somewhat dis- 
dainfully self-reliant. I fancy (it may be only a fancy) 
that there is really some vague association between the 
disdain of sheep and the spirit of individualism. Let 
me not be understood to imply that such individualism 
often leads to disdain of the Divine sherpherding, for 
no one who considers what men are, and what God must 
be, can fail to perceive that, relatively to the mysterious 
and awful Power that made us, we are all incomparably 
more ignorant and stupid than sheep are relatively to 
any human pastor. But I do think that this indivi- 
dualism disinclines us to accept the condition of sheepish- 
ness in general, and disposes us to rebel against human 
authorities, and against custom, when they treat us as if we 
were only fit to be penned, and fleeced, and slaughtered. 
Rabelais hit his mark when he noted the close 
resemblance between men and sheep in the timid fol- 
lowing of others. The strongest of us are original only 
in a few things, in most things we follow the crowd 
— a sheepishness quite as prevalent in free countries 
as under despotism. Not that it would be better other- 
wise ; we need this gregariousness for safety and for 
cohesion, we cannot live in solitude like eagles. 



i : : CHAP TERS C X AXIMAL 5 , 

It is not their gregariousness that I dislike in sheep, 
but their poverty of wit and invention. They belie the 
:::n::5e :f their szz\:\g. I:"y:u ':.:,! never see:: a she-.-:, 
and a young lamb were presented to you for the first 
time, would you not augur well for the future of an 
animal so charmingly merry and playful? You would 
say, ' Here is a creature born to learn all things rapidly, 
since at his second sunrise he is already so much at 
home upon the earth.' You would not foresee the cloud 
of dulness which comes on gradually later, like a cata- 
ract on the organs of vision, and obscures the narrow 
brain. Is there anything in nature lovelier than a 
pasture in early spring, dotted with lambs like snow- 
patches, and filling the pure air with bleatings ? But 
every day they become less charming and less beautiful, 
and at last, when fully fleeced, they present scarcely 
more form than a hedgehog, and the white wool is 
simply dirty, like linen that has been worn too long. 
This before shearing — after it they are hideous scare- 
crows. 

After having written these severe things about sheep 
I feel some twinges of remorse, they are so unpre- 
tending, innocent, and submissive. ■ As a sheep to the 
slaughter ! ' Could any one see the flocks of them 
driven townwards without pity? From the green pas- 
ture, and the summer flowers, and the limpid, alder- 
shaded rivulet, along the dusty highroad to the streets 
of the great city, all destined to the inevitable knife, 
they come in their meekness, unresisting, bringing us 



OTHER ANIMALS. i 9 \ 

food and raiment ; and day by day flows the stream of 
their innocent blood ! 

In the last chapter I may have become somewhat 
disproportionately garrulous about kids. I had not so 
much to say of goats, and deferred it. These creatures 
certainly decline in intelligence as they approach ma- 
turity, and the brain of the full-grown animal is rela- 
tively smaller, whilst the skull is inferior in shape. 
Goats are remarkable for the extreme fidelity with 
which they follow you ; it is not enough to say that 
they fellow like dogs, they are much closer followers 
than dogs are. But I doubt if they ever love their 
masters ; it is certain that they reject caresses with the 
rudest impatience. They are most stupid creatures, and 
will butt at anything that attracts their attention instead 
of observing it, as even an ox will in his own dull bovine 
way. On the other hand, painters may well like goats, 
because they are by far the most paintable of all the 
rustic animals. They are full of fine texture from horn 
to hoof, and of good powerful colouring, incomparably 
superior to the dirty white of sheep, whilst their 
meagre forms, though not beautiful, are full of sinewy 
character. 

It is to be regretted that a creature so marvellously 
intelligent as the fox should live, like a clever Bohe- 
mian, beyond the pale of society. However, if not an 
associate of man, he is an object of great respect, almost 
of positive adoration, and, like other sacred animals, is 
frequently depicted in the art of the land that pays 



192 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

him homage. I am not aware that the tail of any other 
creature ever gave any direct spiritual consolation such 
as a fox's brush may, it appears, afford to a Leicester- 
shire gentleman on his death-bed. Mr. Ruskin mentions 
a print in which that symbol of the religion of fox-hunt- 
ing is held before the eyes of a dying Englishman, just 
as a crucifix is to a Spaniard. Mr. Frank Buckland has 
a page or two to the same effect. There cannot be any 
doubt that the fox is a sort of minor deity in some neigh- 
bourhoods, and I have personally known men in the 
West Riding of Yorkshire who worshipped him — to say 
the least — with a cultUs quite as active as that of the 
Siamese for their white elephants. They certainly 
believed, in all sincerity, that to shoot a fox was a real 
sin, and not at all a venial one. They galloped after him 
three days a- week, the sight of his tail always producing 
the same unfailing enthusiasm; they talked about him 
during the other three, and I believe, though I cannot 
exactly prove it, that they thought of no other deity 
whilst they sat in the parish church — at least so the 
Vicar averred, and surely he ought to know. The 
worship of the fox has produced its own school of fine 
art ; and as Raphael painted Madonnas, and Angelico 
angels, so many industrious artists have devoted their 
skill to the illustration of this sacred little quadruped. I 
cannot, however, add that this religion has been very 
favourable to the higher interests of art. In the first 
place, the beast himself is so small in physical dimensions, 
notwithstanding his enormous moral influence, that he 



OTHER ANIMALS. 193 

occupies no space on the canvas, whilst the scenery in 
which he is hunted is from the artistic point of view as 
uninteresting as scenery well can be. The vestments of 
his high-priests are dreadful things to paint, and are the 
despair of genuine artists ; not like the beautiful things 
of nature for any inimitable loveliness, but because they 
are so glaringly obtrusive and so difficult to unite har- 
moniously with anything else in creation, except flamin- 
goes and boiled lobsters, which the most ingenious 
artistic composer can scarcely find a pretext for intro- 
ducing. Seriously, all pictures and coloured prints of 
fox-hunting, however much talent and skill may be 
lavished upon them, are excluded from the category of 
fine art by the very nature of the subject, and it is a pity 
that the ability which is often lavished upon them should 
be so wasted. They may, of course, be very clever in 
their way ; they often are so ; but it is simply impossible 
to make them harmonies of composed colour. And even 
the engravings from them cannot be truly artistic, for 
the costume has a sort of neatness, which, though 
charming on a tailor's pattern-card, and quite in harmony 
with the generally tidy look of our civilisation in saddlery 
and harness, in carriage-building, boat- building, and the 
rest, is neither picturesque like romantic costume nor 
pure like the nudities or draperies of the Greeks. A 
well-dressed gentleman in top-boots going neatly over 
a stiff fence on a very well-bred horse, is a pretty 
example of the results of discipline, but does not afford 
material for a picture. In fact, it is a sort of material 

z 



i 9 4 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

to be best dealt with by some kindly and intelligent 
caricaturist like John Leech, whose hunting-scenes have 
much more truth and life than the pictures of more 
ambitious artists, whilst they are artistic exactly to the 
degree which the subject naturally calls for. 

By far the most picturesque hunting which is to be 
seen in England is otter-hunting. It always leads you 
along the banks of some stream which is sure to be rich 
in itself, and which gains much by the presence of 
animated and interested people, who forget to be stiff 
and shy in their eagerness about the hunt, and whose 
costume harmonises agreeably with the greys and browns 
of nature. If, however, there is one thing more to my 
taste than following an otter when he is hunted, it is 
to get a quiet look at him when his mind is perfectly 
at ease. There are otters in the stream behind my 
house, but no regular otter-hounds in the neighbour- 
hood ; nor should I regret the absence of them, were it 
not that otters are so destructive of fish, killing not for 
hunger merely, but for sport. I had an opportunity not 
long since of watching an otter under rather peculiar 
circumstances, as to effect. It was late evening, and I 
was walking with my dog near the river-side, on its 
eastern bank, the dog being nearer the water than I was. 
There still remained a glow in the west, but all the 
landscape was in the obscurity of advanced twilight, so 
that it was very difficult to distinguish anything. Suddenly, 
my dog began to bark in an extraordinary manner, as 
if some wild animal were before him, and on prostrating 



OTHER ANIMALS. 195 

myself so as to get the river bank against the light re- 
flection from the western sky, I at once beheld a very 
fine otter in perfect black silhouette against the still bril- 
liant water. He hesitated a few seconds, then dashed 
into the stream and escaped. This is just the way I like 
to pursue wild animals — to watch them quietly in their 
own haunts, not to slaughter or wound them. When 
sportsmen lose their tempers because some poor quad- 
ruped has had speed and cleverness enough to save 
itself I am always secretly delighted, but of course 
dare not say so openly, for sportsmen are so blood- 
thirsty that they might become dangerous if too rashly 
contradicted. 

Many years ago there was a tame otter in my neigh- 
bourhood, which showed great attachment for its human 
friends, and had a playful disposition. It would come 
when called, like a dog, and behaved in every respect 
like a trustworthy household pet. This otter behaved 
perfectly in the dining-room, and ate of everything except 
cooked fish. It is curious that in this instance the here- 
ditary taste did not show itself in the refusal of strange 
kinds of food, but in a connoisseur's fastidiousness about 
the one aliment on which the creature's ancestors had 
fed. It refused all fish that was not both raw and per- 
fectly fresh. The only other hereditary peculiarity worth 
mentioning was the necessity for frequently plunging its 
head and fore-limbs in water, and to satisfy this need a 
bucket was regularly provided. Curiously enough, when 
taken to the river-side, this otter did not willingly swim, 



196 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

but if left to itself would merely use the river-brink as its 
bucket. This is the more strange when we consider that 
the structure of the otter is so admirabfy adapted for 
swimming, since all his feet are webbed, and he can propel 
himself in water with great rapidity. 



*V7 



CHAPTER XIII. 

BIRDS. 

I BELIEVE that every human being, however situated 
in the world of reality, however little given to flights of 
imagination, has at one time or other dreamed that he 
was endowed with wings, and skimming with prodigious 
rapidity at a safe elevation above the irregular surfaces 
of the globe. I feel quite assured beforehand, that every 
reader of these chapters, even if he happens to live at an 
immense distance from the writer of them, or a century 
after the said writer shall be dead and buried, will be 
more or less in the habit of flying in his dreams. 

I have directly asked not a few grave gentlemen and 
ladies whether they flew in this manner, and they have 
invariably answered that they did. Sometimes we fly to 
escape some terrible danger ; enemies crowd round us, 
and just when they become most menacing we suddenly 
remember that nature has provided us with the means 
of safety : we give a stroke or two with our mighty 
pinions, and swiftly raise ourselves beyond the reach of 
our tormentors. At other times we are flying on a great 



198 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

journey : cities, fields, forests, pass under us, and then 
the green land comes to an end, and the blue ocean rolls 
below, sprinkled with white-sailed ships. It may be 
observed, that when any one dreams that he is flying, 
that accomplishment is always a personal accomplish- 
ment of his own, giving him a remarkable superiority 
over others. If he is in love, he holds out a hand to the 
beloved one and says, * Let us fly away together ! ' but 
he never imagines that common humanity can do any- 
thing but walk slowly about upon the earth and gaze at 
him wonderingly with upturned faces. 

These vain and idle dreams are, a reflection of man's 
ancient envy and baffled aspiration. Men have always 
wished that they could fly, and have always felt a little 
hurt by the superiority of so many inferior creatures in 
the matter of locomotion. For nobody affects to deny 
that of all the varieties of locomotion flying is quite 
incomparably the most perfect. It is by far the swiftest, 
to begin with ; though, since men use express trains, 
birds are not so superior as they used to be in the matter 
of simple rapidity. The one splendid superiority of flying 
is, that from any one point of the earth's surface to any 
other point the road is straight as a ray of light and per- 
fect as polished ice, that it never needs repair, that it 
invades no one's property, and has to pay no rents nor 
compensations. The great 'highway of nations,' the ocean 
of salt water, has some of these advantages also, but in a 
degree how imerior ! The ship meets a sand-bank and is 
..arrested, the waves break over her and she becomes a 



BIRDS. 199 



wreck. The bird meets a mountain and rises over it, nor 
can any barrier of rock or fortification arrest her. Think 
of the difference between a ship sailing to India round by 
the Cape of Good Hope, or even, if you will, by the costly 
new canal at Suez, and a bird flying to India over land 
and sea ! Yes, the great ocean of water, glorious as it is, 
may not be compared with the still vaster ocean of the 
air, the shoreless ocean, so thin and clear, that submerges 
all the hills and valleys of the world, and in which not 
even the loftiest Alp was ever islanded ! We are grovel- 
ling at the bottom of it, like starfish in the mud of the 
Atlantic ; but the birds are its swift fishes, having wings 
for fins, and they alone have the freedom of the blue that 
is above us ! 

We may well dream about that marvellous faculty of 
flight ; poets may well imagine that if they knew its secrets 
and had experienced its unimaginable sensations, they 
would write more glorious verse. Did you ever, reader, 
fairly and seriously set yourself to realise what flying 
would be like, supposing of course (as we always do sup- 
pose) that you retained your human feelings, your human 
capacity for intellectual enjoyment of the scenes that 
passed before you ? I have sometimes so fixed my 
thoughts upon these imaginations, that at last, by a reac- 
tion of the wearied fancy, I landed in a strange scepticism 
about all flying. Could it be possible that any creatures 
sustained themselves in the air, ard propelled themselves 
with the rapidity of an express train, by means of feathers 
fastened to skin and agitated by muscles? There are times 



zoo CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

in the depth of the night when these doubts will visit the 
sleepless pillow, just as we doubt sometimes whether 
there can be such realities as the battle of Sadowa or the 
siege of Paris ; but the morning comes and we resume 
our dull acquiescence in the facts, neither doubting them 
nor realising them. The swallows fly about the house ; 
have not swallows flown about it ever since we were 
born, in these months of May and June ? Is not flying 
common enough, and what sensible person would trouble 
his mind about what can be seen every day and every 
where ? 

To realise what flying is, we need to deliver ourselves 
from the effects of this familiarity and to recover the 
faculty of wonder. For however common and familiar 
flying may be, it is of all the Divine inventions one of the 
most marvellous. The extreme marvellousness of it is 
sufficiently proved by the fact that all our men of science 
cannot imitate it, though the models exist in the greatest 
variety and abundance, and they have nothing to do but 
copy. No human being really proposes to himself to 
invent a flying-machine : the machine is already invented 
and in the fullest perfection : all that men have to do is. 
to copy it, and this they cannot achieve for want of a 
material having the strength of bird-muscle, in combina- 
tion with its lightness and power of contraction. When 
you carve a grouse or a woodcock, or any wild bird that 
flies, you sever in the flesh of the breast a marvel which 
belongs as yet exclusively to nature. Men can make ' 
steam-engines and watches, but they cannot make light 



BIRDS. 201 



muscle, with its tremendous power of contraction ; and 
they cannot make anything combining its lightness with 
its active strength. It is this combination of lightness with 
strength and resistance to wear and tear, which always 
marks the superiority of mechanical artificers. A cart 
built in a village may be as strong as a carriage from 
Long Acre ; but then, how heavy it is ! The clumsiest 
boat-builder can make a boat, but not a light one like 
Clasper or Searle. And when the object of Nature is to 
produce a creature uniting lightness and strength, she 
goes so much beyond all human artificers in this difficult 
combination that they cannot follow her, even at a dis- 
tance. A balloon floats in the air. Nature alone makes 
things that will swim in the air. Now the difference in 
marvellousness between aquatic and aerial swimming may 
be estimated with perfect exactness, since it depends 
upon the difference of gravity in the two fluids. The 
weight of air displaced by even a large bird is so minute, 
that we may practically consider him as a creature sus- 
tained in the air entirely by his own exertions. M. Miche- 
let, in one of those amazingly unscientific passages which 
often stagger us in the midst of his prose-poetry, said 
that birds floated, and could make themselves lighter 
than air by swelling themselves at will.* It is useless to 
waste space in demonstrating the absurdity of this, for the 
reader who does not see it on the instant would be unable 

» ■ II enfle son volume, done diminue sa pesanteur relative ; des lors il 
mniite de lui-meme dans un milieu plus lourd que lui. — L'Oiseau, 6th 
edition, p. 2S. 

AA 



202 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

to follow the demonstration. The truth is, that under 
all circumstances, and whether puffed up or not, every 
bird that flies is so much heavier than air, that he is never 
aided by any floating power, or buoyancy, whatever. He 
maintains himself solely by the effort of his wings, and 
how prodigious that effort must be, relatively to the crea- 
ture's weight, every swimmer knows. Men swim in a 
medium so dense that many human bodies can float in it 
without an effort, and yet the little labour that is needed 
to keep the head above the surface and ensure a slow 
advance is enough to produce rapid exhaustion, even in 
the most robust. If we think of flight as a kind of swiming 
which it is, the marvel of it will be much more plain to 
us. Think how long these swimmers of the air- ocean can 
continue without rest ! It is not so much their prodigious 
speed which surprises, for in a medium offering so little 
resistance as the air it is natural that creatures should 
travel swiftly, if they can travel at all ; that which is really 
astonishing is their sustained energy, a superiority to 
fatigue resembling rather the divine force of gods and 
angels than the efforts of mortal weariness. To live on 
the wing like the swallow, to traverse oceans like the 
albatross, a creature must have wells of inward energy 
like those deep mysterious iountains which have never 
been known to fail. 

What the bird thinks and feels, what flying is to him, 
we know not. Some people will tell us that the gladness 
which poets have attributed to him is imaginary, and 
that in reality the sublime flights the poet sings of are to 



BIRDS. 203 



the bird himself no more than a perfectly prosaic way of 
getting his living and making unavoidable ^ourneys. But 
is there not reason to believe, even in an inquiry so 
difficult as this, that we may obtain a little light from our 
human experience ? Do we not invariably rejoice in the 
possession of our own physical faculties, when they are 
perfect enough to be capable of sustained activity, with- 
out any unpleasant reaction afterwards ? It is needless to 
put such a question as this to the active English race. 
We delight in all the varieties of motion that are possible 
for us — in riding, rowing, swimming, skating, even in the 
prosaic exercise of pedestrianism. And this delight is 
certainly not the result of reason in our race, or of reaction 
from intellectual labour, for it is strongest in the young 
who never reason about anything, and in adults belong- 
ing to the classes which do hardly any intellectual work. 
It is a purely physical pleasure, combining the sense of 
relief from the uneasiness of inaction with the enjoyment 
of an agreeable stimulus. Now the more finely-organised 
of the lower animals are just as capable of enjoying 
physical pleasures as we are. When your dog goes out 
with you he does twenty miles to your five, yet you do 
not order him to run the superfluous fifteen : he runs 
them because he rejoices in the exercise. A horse that 
seems exhausted when just taken out of harness will 
gallop wildly round the pasture with his comrades. Who 
forces him to gallop ? He is not spurred by spiked balls, 
like the maddened racers 111 the Roman corso. If quad- 
rupeds delight in the free use of their terrestrial swiftness, 



2c 4 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

so may the birds fly gladly in their play-heaven of 
infinite air. And I have no doubt that every healthy 
bird flies quite as much because he likes it, as with any 
definite purpose of providing - for his family. In the life 
of all wild creatures there is no rigid demarcation between 
duty and amusement : they do not divide action under 
separate moral heads; they fulfil what we call duties 
(such as building habitations and providing for their 
families), but always pleasurably, as a grouse-shooter or 
salmon-fisher increases the supplies of his larder. 

If the reader never studied birds on the wing he may 
be glad to know how it can be conveniently done. With 
a rather powerful telescope, so fixed on a tripod as to be 
rapidly movable in every direction, you may follow the 
flight of many kinds of birds without losing sight of them 
for an instant, and observe at the same time many refine- 
ments of motion which at that distance would escape the 
naked eye. Flying is as delicate an art as the most 
perfect skating or rowing, and many a wild bird is an 
artist in his way, delighting in the exercise of his skill. 
To every one who takes pleasure in seeing perfectly 
accomplished action, such as perfect rowing, or dancing, 
or horsemanship, let me recommend the study of a kestrel 
with a telescope as he slowly circles with motionless 
wings, or hangs exactly in the same place, though the 
wind may be rushing past him at the rate of twenty miles 
an hour. At times he alters slightly the angle of his 
wings, and now and then they quiver, but the precise 
sufficiency of the change to answer the alterations of the 



BIRDS. 205 



aerial currents is proved by the fixity of the bird. Of all 
the varieties of flight to be easily observed in England 
that of the kestrel is the most beautiful ; and if the bird's 
art, in its origin divine and improved by the practice of 
unnumbered generations, were not far above the gropings 
of human science, it might be added that it is the most 
scientific. The kestrel wastes no effort, he sets his wings 
as if he had studied the decomposition of forces, and the 
powers of the air support him. The eagle has the same 
science, but of him I say little, having rarely seen him 
wild. Macgillivray tells us that most eagles and hawks 
have the habit of sailing • or floating in circles, ' as if for 
amusement.' 

It may be observed that the importance of birds in 
pictorial art and in sculpture bears a very irregular rela- 
tion to their importance in natural history, and even in 
poetry. Several birds are eagerly sought by naturalists 
which the artist seldom concerns himself about, either on 
account of their extreme rarity and the consequent in- 
convenience of study, or else because they are too insig- 
nificant in appearance. Poets never weary of the night- 
ingale, but painters wisely avoid the inimitable songstress. 
If some artist attempted to illustrate the exquisite 
opening of Parisina : — 

1 It is the hour when from the boughs 
The nightingale's high voice is heard, ' 

we know the sort of illustration that might be expected. 
He would give us an evening landscape, with foliage 



2 o6 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

against the clearness of the sky, and then, somewhere on 
the extremity of a twig, a dickeybird of some kind, sup- 
posed to be a nightingale but much exaggerated in size, 
would reward the investigations of the persevering student. 
The nightingale, reversing the great lesson of our infancy, 
is heard and not seen ; poets may praise his singing, and 
violinists may imitate it if they can, but painters have 
nothing to do with him. How he fills the woods at mid- 
night ! Invisible, hidden for the greater majesty of the 
effect, he, no larger than one of the hundred million leaves, 
makes them all vibrate to his melody. He, and the 
skylark, are the beloved birds of poets ; but painters like 
the eagle, the swan, the splendid peacock, the ashy heron, 
the scarlet ibis. In sculpture, the material goes far to 
settle the preference ; the workers in marble may give us 
severe abstracts of the terrible bird of Jove, but they wisely 
avoid all slender stilts and bills. On the other hand, our 
clever modern wood-carvers, who study nature like 
painters, take a pride in proving the adaptability of their 
material, and carve dead snipes and woodcocks, or slender 
fishers and waders. Precious indeed to the carver ana 
the beautiful forms of birds ! Nothing in all the realm of 
nature has curves of that particular kind of loveliness, — 
curves so bold and pure, yet restrained by such perfect 
temperance. Who can tell what Christian art may have 
gained from one bird emblem, what recondite lessons of 
beauty were taught by the mystic dove ? Age after age 
the carvers and painters studied him, and learned of him 
more and more. 



*07 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BIRDS (continued). 

ONLY the tame birds favour us with the quiet enjoy- 
ment of their beauty, for though a quick observer may 
catch glimpses of the wild ones, and see enough for the 
purposes of the naturalist, he can seldom study them as 
artists like to study. For this reason I say less of birds 
in these chapters than the interest of the subject deserves, 
not being willing to speak of what I have not seen in 
nature. There exist, it is true, many poor prisoners in 
public gardens and private cages, and great quantities of 
stuffed skins in the glass cases of museums ; but in refer- 
ence to this material I ask myself what relation all this 
bird-beauty bears to the beauty of the world as man 
sees it ; and the answer is, that for man the world is but 
little adorned by the beauty of any birds that he has not 
domesticated. Writing then simply from the human point 
of view, I find the vast materials of science for the most 
part unavailable. What do we really see of birds in na- 
ture ? Usually either specks in the distance or a confusion 
of rapid movement nearer hand, the form in both cases 



208 CHAPTERS QN ANIMALS. 

eluding us. Many of us have seen wild eagles, that is, a 
pair of dots near the brow of some Highland mountain, 
which when most visible we should have taken for hawks 
without the assurance of our guide or gamekeeper. And 
even much commoner birds than these perpetually elude 
our sight by the mere rapidity of their motion. Take, 
for instance, the king-fisher. You are idling by the river- 
side in summer, and between brown water and green 
boughs goes a sudden cerulean flash ! A zigzag lightning 
of flaming azure remains for an instant upon the retina, 
and you know that a king-fisher has passed. But, pray, 
what have you perceived of his form ? What a difference 
between birds and flowers ! how easy it is to see the 
flowers, that final decoration of the earth ; how difficult 
to watch the birds ! Sometimes, when flowers were de- 
stroyed in heedlessness, I have wished that they had wings 
and could escape, but oftener I have desired some magic 
spell that might fix the bird upon the bough, just till he 
could be painted ! We all know the Sultana of the 
Nightingale — 

' The maid for whom hk melody 

His thousand songs are heard on high 

* • * * 

His queen, the garden queen, his Rose,' 

but how few of us know her lover ! And even if birds 
would let themselves be better seen, it is not in our 
northern climate that we can estimate their value as a 
part oi the splendour of the world. In the forests 01 the 



BIRDS. 209 



tropics they are great and gorgeous, clothed with scarlet 
and green, and the most dazzling orange, and azure as 
from heaven, and purple of the sea, and crimson of 
tropical sunsets. In those lands the birds carry the most 
intense colour everywhere, and must perforce be seen, 
like a D.C.L. in his academical robes, or young Oliver 
Goldsmith in his scarlet breeches. But of our northern 
birds, though many of them have pretty and rather 
bright colours, when you examine them, the prevailing 
impression is conveyed by the adjective so frequently 
used by Mr. Morris in his poetry, when he talks simply 
of 'the brown bird.' They delight the ear rather than the 
eye, and as a visible part of our northern nature their 
position is modest in the extreme. The sea-birds show 
best of all, flashing white on green wave and azure sky, 
and so repeating the brilliant accents of the foam-flake 
and the cloud. The common sea-gull, though he boasts 
no charm of voice, holds a far more important rank in 
pictorial nature than the nightingale or the lark. And 
there are places on the wild coasts where the sea-fowl can 
no more be omitted by the painter than mankind in the 
streets of cities. Their cities are the inaccessible clifis 
whose grandeur gains enormously by their tumultuous 
clouds of wings. No mist- wreath on alpine precipice has 
the majesty of those unnumbered multitudes; no song in 
southern woodland has the poetry oi their discordant 
cries. Behind them the iron-bound coast where their 
nests are made; below them — a thousand feet below 
them — the restless, pitiless breakers that cast the wreck 

BB 



2io CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

against the rock ; in front of them the unquiet plain of 
v/aters, storm-swept, inhospitable, without one friendly 
bough, cr any sheltering eaves ! Truly these creatures 
have a stein and drear existence, and there is a watchful 
gravity in their aspect altogether different from the light- 
headedness of the sylvan songsters. They are not happy 
as chirping sparrows are happy, but have something of 
the ocean's melancholy, and the grave bearing of hard- 
living fishermen, the toilers of the sea. 

Sea-gulls are beautiful when the sky is clear and blue, 
and the bright sunshine brings out the purity of their 
forms, yet I like them, better against darkly-lowering 
clouds, and best of all when the black tempest is brewing, 
and they have their part in the increasing anxiety and 
agitation of nature. At such a time as that, when the 
watchful mariner reefs his sails, and looks to every rope 
and spar with redoubled caution, the gulls are blown 
across the darkening heaven,, and the floating divers are 
tossed on the rising waves. Then the little petrel runs 
down the trough of the sea, and the sailor inwardly 
prayeth. These wild birds are safer than he is ; they 
can rest on their wings like a balloon in the tranquil 
heart of the hurricane. Only when they touch the water 
need they know that a storm is raging. 

I think, of all the travelling that is done upon the 
planet, the travelling of some great sea-bird, such as the 
albatross for instance, is the most sublime. Think of him 
leaving some barren rock in the Austral Ocean, and 
without further preparation than the unfolding of his 



BIRDS. 211 



mighty wings, setting forth on a voyage of two or three 
hundred leagues ! The qualities of self-reliance and self- 
help, which we are told that we ought to acquire, belong 
much more decidedly to the albatross than to any human 
being who ever existed. The truth is, that not ' self- 
help,' but ' mutual help' must be the motto of humanity, 
and it is only by association that we travel. Even our 
brave Livingstone, one of the most self-reliant travellers 
ever known, needs the help of many negroes for the 
accomplishment of his designs ; and we know with what 
an imposing force the great Pasha, Sir Samuel Baker, has 
lately gone southwards from the land of Egypt to the 
sources of the Nile. Merely to be in a modern steamship 
is in fact to accept the services of a thousand laborious 
human helpers, but when the albatross sails forth alone 
nothing but the natural forces aid him ; he propels himself 
by his own unwearied pinions, and seeks his food in the 
waves below. Self-reliance of that genuine kind is quite 
beyond us, our human self-reliance being simply the 
confidence in our power of getting money, on which we 
really rely, and which means the help of all humanity. 
The great lonely birds are self-reliant, and what a noble 
absence of fear is needed for the daily habit of their lives ! 
Man's nervous apprehension of possible evil would hinder 
his use of their powers if he possessed them. If we could 
fly to America we should want floating dining-rooms 
under us for refreshment, and hospitals in case of sickness 
or fatigue. 

It seems as if it would be pleasanter to be one o*. the 



212 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

gregarious birds than one of the solitaries, but the help 
we most value, that given to us in weakness or disease, 
is denied to the ailing members of a flock of birds, who 
must keep the regulated pace. In this respect the tame 
swan is more fortunate than his ancestors, since his life, 
though less active, is more tranquil and independent. 
The difference is very exactly that between an officer en 
retraite, and the soldier under the flag. The discipline of 
the wild gregarious birds is very regular and severe, and 
they are all the stronger and more active for this disci- 
pline. Domestication is always, in a certain sense, dete- 
rioration. Birds may grow larger in the domestic state, 
they may weigh more, and a couple of them may make 
a more sufficient dinner, when they are bred specially for 
the table, but the living creature is not what he was. The 
true degradation of the bird is to lose the power of flight 
Our tame swans are very beautiful ; they have a devel- 
oped luxurious beauty like that of garden flowers, of 
enormous lilies and roses, but can they fly ? Beautiful as 
are the swans upon the Thames, admirably as they adorn 
the rich reaches of a landscape which without them would 
be all but perfect, and with them is the ideal realised, 
what, after all, does the Londoner know of swans ? He 
alone who has heard at once the harmony of their hun- 
dred wings, and seen the white flock come to earth on the 
borders of some lonely mere, he alone knows the tribe or 
nation of the swans! * There is a wild harmony,' says 
Charles St. John, 'in their bugle-cry as they wheel round 
and round, now separating into small companies as each 



BIRDS. 213 



family of five or six seems inclined to alight ; and now 
all joining again in along undulating line, waiting for the 
word of command of some old leader !' You may see this 
occasionally in the remote Highlands, or more frequently 
you may hear the sounds of wings far above you in the 
night — the 'gabble raches' or 'gabriel ratchets' of popu- 
lar superstition, the passing of the aerial hunter with all 
his noisy hounds ! 

Still, if the swan that is commonly known to us has not 
this collective grandeur, he has even superior individual 
beauty. The wild swan is not so beautiful, nor so ma- 
jestic, as the living ornament of our own familiar Thames. 
No painter who undertook to represent a royal progress 
on the river would fail to give us the noble bird close to 
the royal barge. His white breast meets the wavelets, 
impelled invisibly by rhythmic impulses, his soft wings 
catch the gentle airs of summer, whilst high on the grace- 
ful neck dwells the living head that governs that perfect 
motion ! What need of green of parrot, or scarlet of 
flamingo, or insect iridescence ? What need of any 
colour but that effulgent whiteness, that golden beak, and 
that one touch of black ? 

We have full liberty to enjoy the beauty of these glo- 
rious birds without any prosaic drawback from our ideal. 
They are completely and harmoniously majestic. They 
are full of courage, they are devotedly faithful and affec- 
tionate, and they live a hundred years. Yet, since the 
bird who could match the eagle in courage and man 
himself in longevity, and with whose beauty the king of 



214 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



the gods did not disdain to clothe himself, had never 
given the least sign of any musical talent or accomplish- 
ment ; the fertile human imagination, always so unwilling 
to leave any hiatus in its ideals, invented that most poet- 
ical fable of the swan's song at the close of a songless 
life ; as if the bird which had never been musical when 
most happy, became so in the dark shadow of imminent 
dissolution. Of all strange old beliefs, I think this is one 
of the most curiously beautiful. Our forefathers took it 
quite seriously, and went and listened for the melody of 
dying swans, as the Queen of Navarre went to see a 
young lady die, that she might catch a glimpse of the 
soul as it passed between the body and the ceiling. The 
same Queen of Navarre explained the swan's song by the 
supposition that the bird's spirit, leaving the body through 
so long a neck, would produce musical murmurs. Miche- 
let half believes that the swan really did sing in Virgil's 
time, but that since then, having come into northern 
climes, her Muse, which was of the south, is mute, and 
the bird alone survives. 

With all our delight in art, and our interest in natural 
history, it may be doubted whether we care for bird- 
beauty so much as they did in the middle ages. We are 
certainly not so fond of having peacocks in our gardens 
as our ancestors were, and their greater appreciation of 
the peacock is still more clearly proved by their custom 
of serving him at high festivals with all his most magni- 
ficent plumage. They wore, too, the plumes of birds, as 
the most perfect top or finial of costume. In Japanese art, 



BIRDS. 21 5 



which up to the present date corresponds accurately to 
our art of the Middle Ages, birds have an important 
place and are treated with remarkable power and knowl- 
edge. The truth is, that to admire birds quite heartily 
and sufficiently it appears as if a little childishness were 
necessary. All children take an interest in birds, as all 
properly constituted women do in flowers, and our best 
impressions of birds are, I believe, not really recent, but 
reminiscences of very early youth. I distinctly remember 
that a lady who had a peacock gave me one of its most 
splendid feathers, at a time when neither literature nor 
art could have taught any appreciation of beauty ; but 
the intensity of that colour, the gleaming splendour of 
those filaments are distinct in my memory yet. The 
business-like gravity of this nineteenth century prevents 
all serious persons of the male sex from putting feathers 
in their hats (except a few picturesque Volunteers) ; yet 
surely there is something excessive in our disdain of 
these, the most perfect of all ornaments, which the dying 
birds bequeath. Nothing in nature is more beautiful than 
a feather, with its delicate tapering curves, and colour 
always admirable in its way, whether the prevailing note 
of it be one of sobriety or of splendour. The savage who 
covers his whole mantle with short feathers closely ar- 
ranged as on a dove's breast, proves his sensibility to a 
kind of natural beauty which civilised men neglect. Even 
our English birds supply a very complete scale of colour, 
and if not rich in the brilliant contrasts of the tropics, 
they are often admirable for those delicate gradations and 



216 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

quiet harmonies which the cultivated eye prefers. The 
varieties of grey and brown in sea-fowl and mountain- 
game correspond to the rich varieties of the same colour- 
motives in rainy skies and autumnal or wintry landscape, 
and the more we come to know of colour the more alive 
we are to these less obvious beauties. 

Were it not that space is failing me I should like to 
speak at length about the birds we have domesticated. 
Of these the pigeons are the most beautiful, and the 
favourites of poets and painters. They look their best in 
the intense sunshine of a southern summer, wheeling 
round some mediaeval dovecote tower, with the dark 
blue sky behind them. The white ones are my favourites, 
on account of their dazzling purity, and the completeness 
with which their whole form is revealed, as if it were 
carved in marble ; but the details of colouring in other 
varieties are often very interesting when you see them 
near at hand; and several excellent painters (need I 
name John Lewis ?) have studied their wonderful blues 
and purples with the care and diligence which they 
deserve. Still more frequently painted are our familiar 
acquaintances of the poultry-yard, Chanticleer the splen- 
did and the proud, with all his humble harem. Painters 
find in them a mine of rich warm colour and plenty of 
characteristic attitude, and poultry have been so asso- 
ciated with human life from very remote antiquity, that 
they have quite an important place in literature. Without 
wishing to detract from the merits of any other artist, I 
may allude, in passing, to the admirable poultry of 



BIRDS. 217 

Charles Jacque, who, so far as my knowledge goes, has 
drawn them better than anybody else, as to the truth and 
variety of attitude and expression. He has, to begin 
with, the gifts of the born animal-painter, and is a great 
poultry-fancier also, which has no doubt much strength- 
ened his habits of observation. His countryman, M. 
Bracquemond, is especially strong in water-fowl, and few 
subjects of a familiar kind are more rewarding to an artist 
of real ability. There is a great deal of beautiful colour 
about ducks, from the rich soft gold of the fluffy duck- 
lings, to the deep iridescence of a drake's neck, and the 
strong markings on his wings, besides which the painter 
of water-fowl gets the ripples and reflections of the liquid 
surface, which are better worth painting than the trodden 
straw of the farm-yard. 

I leave the hens and ducks somewhat hastily and 
reluctantly, in order to have space for a few words about 
the manner in w r hich birds are usually treated. Instead 
of finding a tranquil pleasure in watching the habits of 
these most admirable and interesting creatures, the aver- 
age European thinks only about shooting them. If a boy 
happens to discover a heron by the side of some quiet 
stream, the one idea that instantly takes possession of his 
mind is the regret that he has no gun ; and if, un- 
fortunately, the weapon happens to be in his hands, he 
kills the heron (or more probably wounds him) without a 
moment's doubt or hesitation. When the boy becomes 
a man, the passion for killing has strengthened into a 
confirmed habit, made inveterate by the pride of skill. 

CC 



21 S CHJP7I-.: OX JXIMJLS. 

The wild bird is not looked upon as a creature to be 
treated with more hospitality than a wolf; everybody 
fires at him as at some noxious vermin. Even the scientific 
naturalist adds yearly to the long catalogue of destruc- 
tion, to supply his dissecting-room with bodies and his 
glass cases with stuffed skins. And so it comes to pass that 
the ild birds of civilised countries are every year more 
rare, and we are all as ignorant about them as people 
must be who have nothing but books of science, without 
that personal familiarity which alone makes knowledge 
alive. The late Mr. Waterton, the naturalist, gave a fine 
example in his gentle hospitality. Round his house in 
Yorkshire was a great space of land, with wood and 
water, encircled by a protecting wall ; within that space 
no gun was ever fired, it was the guarded paradise of the 
birds. In their assurance of perfect peace they did not 
shun man's friendly observation. Without our stupid 
destructiveness there might be many such bird-Edens as 
that. The birds do not avoid us naturally. It has always 
been roted by voyagers that in lands hitherto uninhabit- 
ed and unvisited by man they sat quietly within gunshot, 
looking at their strange visitors with undismayed curios- 
ity. If men had treated them kindly they might have 
been our friends. Did the reader ever happen to meet 
with the well-known birds' friend in the garden of the 
Tuileries, — an old man whose life had been saddened by 
the loss of those he loved, and who sought consolation in 
his solitude, and found it in the friendship of little birds ? 
They flew about his head, not as the bird in Rubens's 



BIRDS. 219 



picture of his sons, which is held by a piece of string, but 
bound by no thread except the invisible one of their gra- 
titude, and affection, and expectation. Not entirely 
disinterested or unselfish in their love, yet was it full of 
trust, and that trust quite a personal and peculiar one, 
for it was given to him alone. A minute before he came 
into the garden they were wild birds still, and when he 
had gone home they returned to their lofty trees ; but 
whilst he walked there in the afternoon they went and 
talked with him as if he had been their father, settling on 
his shoulders and his arms, and picking the crumbs close 
to his careful feet. They must have wondered at his 
absence when he died, and even now, though things are 
so changed since then, and the Palace is a blackened ruin, 
and it seems as if centuries had passed. I believe that 
those little sparrows and finches still remember their old 
friend, and would make a fluttering cloud of gladness 
about his head if he could come from the cemetery where 
he sleeps and revisit the chestnut shades. 

The practice of keeping these sweet singers in cages is 
of all cruelties the most pardonable, for it proceeds from 
love alone, and yet Imay enter here a not intemperate 
protest. The truth is, that of caged birds and their 
happiness or unhappiness I am simply and absolutely 
ignorant, never having permitted that kind of imprison- 
ment where I had any power to prevent it. In this 
matter the practice of Leonardo da Vinci seems the best 
for us to imitate; for though he did indeed purchase 
little singing-birds in cages, it was only to set them free, 



220 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

Ah ! that first taste of recovered liberty, when the wings 
beat no longer against the pitiless wires but flew in the 
boundless air ! Had they known, those ransomed wand- 
erers, that their liberator had bought their freedom, 
would they not have come back to him every day to fill 
his garden with their songs, and tell him the secret of 
their nests in the depths of the distant woods ? 

In the same spirit of kindness the Norwegian peasants 
put a sheaf of unthreshed wheat on the roof of the house 
"at Christmas. Soon the news of this rare feast spreads 
far and wide amongst the half-starved birds in the forest, 
and they come like a swarm of bees. Is not that better 
than attracting larks* by the flashes of a treacherous 
mirror, and shooting them from an ambush ? 

* I wish all song-birds were rank poison, — there might be some chance 
of preserving them then. What right-minded person can eat larks and 
thrushes without compunction ? One of the most odious and monstrous 
sights to be met with in Europe is a fat and vu'gar French bagman 
devouring a dish of sky-larks. Look at him as he e( ts, not inaudibly, 
and think of Shelley's verse ! Only imagine those abominable old Romans 
who swallowed platefuls of nightingales' tongues ! How perfectly bite 
was their notion of luxury ! how stupid to fancy that because the night- 
ingale sang so sweetly her tongue must be particularly succulent ! It 
would be as reasonable to make a dish of old fiddle-strings. 



221 



CHAPTER XV. 

ANIMALS IN ART. 

SOME years ago, wandering in Picardy, I stayed for the 
night at a certain inn, and having ordered some beef for 
supper, had the satisfaction of seeing a whole ox placed 
on the table before me. The jargon of the establishment, 
who was also the cook, gave me indeed the dish my 
hunger craved for after a walk of twenty miles ; but by 
way of a poetical or artistic effect (which could have 
occurred to nobody but a Frenchman), he placed at the 
same time on the table the waxen image of an ox. He 
set this beast, which was exactly the size of those oxen 
which Gulliver devoured in Lilliput, on. the white table- 
cloth in front of me, stepped back to look at him as an 
artist looks at the picture on his easel, then snatched him 
up hastily, and gave a push to one of the legs and a twist 
to the tail, replaced him on the table, smiled in conscious 
triumph and exclaimed, * There, sir, isn't he perfect?' 

He had made this masterpiece whilst engaged in the 
still more useful and admirable art of cooking the 
natural beef. There was no denying the cleverness of the 



222 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

performance ; the ox was full of life, his attitude ex- 
pressed a puzzled bovine apprehension as if some alarm- 
ing little animal were teasing him, every limb was ready 
for action, and even the eye, though it was merely a hole 
bored with one of the prongs of a steel fork, seemed to 
glare with fiery excitement in the dark shadow cast by 
the lamp. My solitary meal was greatly enlivened by 
this interesting study, but the artist had still another 
surprise in reserve. When he entered with the dessert 
he lifted daintily from a plate of petit s fours a most 
savage-looking little wax dog, which being placed in 
front of the excited ox began, as it seemed, to bark most 
furiously. He had made the dog whilst looking after 
those other dishes whose merits had just been very grate- 
fully appreciated. 

It is needless to add that we became great friends at 
once, and that I spent hours with him in the kitchen 
watching the simultaneous exercise of his two arts. The 
cookery was never neglected ; but whenever the pans 
could be left to themselves for a minute, the skilful 
fingers took up the shapeless wax, and pushed and 
squeezed it into the semblance of some living animal. 
The man had never studied from nature, except by 
momentary observation of such living creatures as hap- 
pened to come in his way, and he had not the most 
rudimentary notion of the art of drawing; but he had 
such an instinctive perception of animal life and action, 
so sure a memory for movement, for everything that 
goes to the expression of character, that his work was 



ANIMALS IN ART. 223 



always animated and delightful. The want of system- 
atic study was evident, but not evident at the first 
glance ; his intelligence and sympathy threw dust in the 
eyes of criticism, and it was only after the first wonder 
had passed away that one perceived the absence of 
refinement in the forms and the simple ignorance of art. 
His history was briefly this. As a child he had lived in 
the country, and been set to watch pigs ; so he had 
begun, in childhood, to make models of his pigs in clay, 
since which time modelling had been to him a habit, and 
his fingers were never quite happy when doing anything 
else. He had spent a year or two in Paris, terribly over- 
worked at a restaurant on the boulevards, yet even there 
he had gone on making his little waxen animals. Some 
famous artists had seen them and had been struck by the 
surprising natural gift which made them suggest an 
artistic education ; but the lad preferred, perhaps wisely, 
the modest certainties of his own position, and remained 
an amateur, full of inborn cleverness, but devoid of 
science. I gave him a commission to the munificent 
amount of thirty francs, in return for which he sent me a 
herd of seventeen animals, all of which are remarkable 
artistic curiosities, showing what the natural gift may 
accomplish without the aids of culture. 

Now this case is interesting for the light it throws on 
the nature of that instinct which is the fundamental 
endowment of the animalier. That endowment is the 
faculty of retaining a characteristic movement, so instan- 
taneous in the living creature that it can never be studied 



z 2 4 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

aa:a:ai-s: rb:::a: by abe eaibaie, are abe res: r.iy be rret 
b y the study : : hawing a n a anatomy ; but without that 
| e rnliar gift, and it is rare indeed, the most painstaking" 
saady is not of the least use. It may even be added, 
tba: abe ier.es: areisri: a abs ~aii fail :: :beir ebb:: if this be 
v/ar-bag. I: is :er:airby fr:rr. abe purely ar:is:i: a:irrt :f 
view, a far higher thing to be able to colour beautifully 
a ad compose well than to remember quite accurately 
how a pig looks at you, or how a dog scratches his way 
into a rat-hole ; but the colour of Titian and the compo- 
sition of Raphael would not have made such an animal- 
aaba:er as Laaaseer. Tbe ra::s: srierebbc craurjbasmen 
in Europe could ret, with all their scier.:e teach the 
ra:s: b::be aaai! 1::"- :: fr=~ sab: a abba- es aba: bare 
by Bracquemond in the ' PORTFOLIO,' and you may be 
a member of the Royal Academy or a Grand Prix de 
J.::: '.vi±:a: beba- able :: si:e::b a :a: :r a srairreb 

This is one of those truths about art which the outside 
pub lie feels m:re abar. arrises ear :ri:i: = . 5uee:se b:e 
case of an admirable painter, able to draw well, and 
colour well, and compose well, but without any special 
faculty for retaining the expression of anirr.ais — suppose 
that this painter sent animal pictures to the exhibitions, 
is it not certain that they would be received with cold- 
ness in comparison to works having the qualities of 



ANIMALS IN ART, 225 



Landseer, and his deficiencies? Every one who knows 
enough about art to be able to distinguish between the 
sources of his satisfaction, is aware that although Land- 
seer most deservedly holds splendid and even supreme 
rank as an animalier, and although his painting is a 
technical wonder, he is not either a colourist or a com- 
poser, and that considered simply as painting, notwith- 
standing the technical and manual marvellousness just 
alluded to, his art is not of a high order, does not even 
take rank with the better sort of serious contemporary 
work. Most of us are fully aware of all this, and yet 
who begrudges Sir Edwin his splendid rewards in wealth 
and honour, the popular applause, the royal favour ? Do 
we not all feel that the divine gift which is in him, the 
gift of placing on canvas the life of an animal, not its 
body merely as others do, but its feelings and its 
thoughts, and that with a vividness unrivalled by mortal 
hand — do we not feel that this gift is to an animal- 
painter the first and most essential of his talents, and 
that if outside of it the artist is simply respectable, we 
need ask from him no more ? 

It is often believed that animal design is easier than 
the human figure, and it is true, no doubt, that the 
animalier has a certain latitude which resembles in kind, 
but not in degree, the latitude of the landscape-painter. 
If you are painting a sheep, for instance, you need not 
be particular about individuality, because people in gen- 
eral observe sheep so little that they would not appre- 
ciate portraiture ; if your sheep have the right sheepish 

DD 



226 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

look, and a shape and texture that will pass the ordeal 
of a criticism based on general observation only, you are 
as safe as the landscape-painter when he takes liberties 
with clouds and trees. But these comparisons, as to 
facility, between one branch of art and another, have 
always, or nearly always, some element of fallacy, due 
to the omission of some impediment In this matter of 
animal-painting, people forget that although the lower 
animals may be easier to paint, in some respects, than 
men and women, they cannot be studied so conven- 
iently. No branch of art, except what is called still- 
life, is so convenient to the student as the human figure. 
Every one who has drawn from a well-trained profes- 
sional model knows the incalculable advantage of being 
able to correct his attitude by a word, without moving 
from one's place ; every one who has drawn from ani- 
mals has felt how grievous it is not to be able to influ- 
ence their movements any more than if they were clouds 
or waves. There are differences, no doubt : an ox is not 
so lively as a dog just emerging from puppyhood ; but 
the most staid and sober animals are the most decep- 
tive. A pair of oxen are standing yoked to the great 
waggon in the farm-yard ; the goad is leaning against 
the horn of one of them, and to any ordinary observer 
both the patient creatures seem as still as oxen of 
bronze. Now plant yourself before them with drawing 
materials and make a careful study; you will shortly 
discover that this apparent stillness conceals in reality 
an imperceptibly slow motion. It is the stillness of the 



JNIMJLS IN ART. 227 



hand on your watch, of the' shadow on the sun-dial, with 
the difference (not in your favour) that whereas you 
know in what direction the hand and the shadow are 
going, and can make allowances accordingly, you cannot 
foresee the changes which the next few minutes will 
bring about in the outlines of a group of oxen. All 
waking life is naturally accompanied by continual mo- 
tion, unless in the case of certain reptiles, such as the 
crocodile, whose death-like immobility might tempt a 
painter as much as its hideousness would repel him. 
The human model, by long practice, and an incessant 
effort of the will, endures one after another the thousand 
little uneasinesses which the mere processes of living 
inflict upon us ; but an animal seeks relief from them in 
motion. The unhappy prisoners in menageries expend 
their irritability in movements as unceasing as they are 
monotonous. Even the painter's model, the dog tied on 
a little platform in the studio, feels the irksomeness of 
restraint, and has frequently to be held in position by 
an attendant. Some painters employ two attendants 
when they study animals from nature ; one to hold the 
model, the other to occupy its attention. Is it not evi- 
dent that there must always be a wide difference, in 
point of instructiveness, between study of this kind, so 
broken and interrupted, so trying to the patience, and 
quiet work from the living human model, who preserves 
his attitude whilst the student requires him, and accu- 
rately resumes it after every interval of rest ? Surely 
in estimating the differences of facility in various depart- 



228 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



ments of the fine arts we ought to take into account 
the opportunities for convenient study. And it may be 
observed, farther, that although animal form is partially 
concealed by fur, the concealment is much less complete 
than that of the human form by drapery. The truth is, 
that in this respect animal-painting lies half-way between 
that of the draped and that of the naked figure. It re- 
quires a far closer study of organization to paint the leg 
even of a thickly-furred animal than to paint a man's leg 
in a loose trowser — in the latter case it is enough to get 
the true creases of the cloth, and I know by careful com- 
parison of work actually done (for this is a subject which 
greatly exercised my curiosity at one time) that it is not 
the best draughtsman of the nude who will give the creases 
best. Creases in cloth are a separate study, pushed very 
far, too far, at the present day, by the draughtsmen for 
our illustrated newspapers. 

The most popular animal-painters pay close atten- 
tion to the imitation of texture. This is not wrong in 
itself, but it is a sure sign of degradation in any art 
when time and care are bestowed upon the study of 
surface to the neglect of structure. But this is a matter 
which does not strictly belong to any branch of art 
except as a consequence of general conditions of feeling. 
The public mind of Europe, though greatly interested in 
pictures, or amused by them, was during the first twenty 
years of the art-revival that we have witnessed, and is 
still for the most part, sincerely indifferent to masterly 
ordonnance in construction, yet easily pleased by surface 



ANIMALS IN ART. 229 

attraction and ornament This spirit affected the cur- 
rent criticism of all the arts, but especially the criticism 
of poetry. 

In 1853, Mr. Matthew Arnold wrote (in the Preface 
to the first edition of his Poems), — 'We can hardly at 
the present day understand what Menander meant when 
he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his 
comedy that he had finished it, not having yet written 
a single line, because he had constructed the action of it 
in his mind. A modern critic would " have assured him 
that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant 
things which arose under his pen as he went along. 
.... We have critics who seem to direct their atten- 
tion merely to detached expressions, to the language 
about the action, not to the action itself. They v\ ill 
permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to 
suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies 
them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with a 
shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is, they 
permit him to leave their poetical sense ungratificd, pro- 
vided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their 
curiosity.' 

When this preference for rhetoric over grand poetical 
construction exercises itself in criticism of painting it 
always over-estimates anything like cleverness in the 
imitation of texture. The temptation to do so is pecu- 
liarly strong when an animal-painter is under consider- 
ation. Every animal that painters touch is remarkable 
for some especial kind of surface-beauty ; even the pig 



23o CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

has a brilliant silkiness when he happens to be clean, 
and no fashionable artist would paint him othenvise. 
The soft fur of the thickly-clad bovines, the delicate 
fine hair of the smooth ones, the shining coats of well- 
groomed horses, the wavy hair of goats, the wool of 
sheep, the shadowy masses of mane in stallion and lion, 
with the rich variety of colour that they present, the 
russets, and yellows, and tawnies, and blacks, and deli- 
cate pale grays, and warm tones like vellum, pleasant 
to the eye, — all these variously beautiful textures are 
worth careful painting, and the very greatest artists 
have enjoyed them. The error of our criticism, and of 
our art too, is not that we enjoy these beauties of nature, 
which are truly amongst the purest sources of pleasure 
the eye can find for its refreshment ; our error is to be 
so enchanted with these things as to prefer the clever 
imitation of them to noble pictorial construction. 

The right education for an animal-painter is a severe 
training in the figure, followed by careful drawing and 
dissection of dead animals. All painters do wisely to 
accept what science can teach them as an aid to memory, 
but animal-painters profit by this help even more, pro- 
portionately, than any other artists. A landscape- 
painter may get on without knowing the anatomy of 
plants, though botany would be a great help to him ; 
a figure-painter may surmount a difficulty by reference 
to the living model, but without anatomy it would be 
impossible to do serious work in the sculpture or design 
of animals. No one, who has not dissected, can know the 



ANIMALS IN ART. 231 



marvel of their structure. Take, as an example, the 
knee of the horse (carpus) ; it is built up like the wall 
of a Highland hut, and when you think what violent 
shocks this little piece of God's masonry has to undergo, 
and when you see by actual dissection how the stones of 
it are fitted into their places and bound together to 
keep them all where they ought to be, is it not natural 
that after these thoughts and observations you should 
draw a horse's knee in action with keener interest and 
more accurate truth than if you thought of it merely as 
a rather awkward kind of hinge ? And so with the 
wonderful pastern bones, so small and fine in the nobler 
races, and yet so strong and so firmly kept together by 
the thin tendinous prolongations of the higher muscles, 
that they can safely receive the whole combined weight 
of the horse and his rider in descending at the conclu- 
sion of a leap ! Could any artist who took a hearty 
interest in this astonishing piece of construction ever 
draw it in a negligent or careless temper ? All the 
great men who have drawn animals have recognised 
the importance of anatomy. How persistently Leo- 
nardo da Vinci worked at it ! He, of whom it was said 
especially that he was stupendissimo in far cavalli, ac- 
quired his power by dissecting and making finished 
anatomical drawings, and the great equestrian statue of 
Francesco Sforza was prepared for with rigorous self- 
discipline in the accurate teachings of science. Geri- 
cault, who was one of the soundest painters of horses 
that ever lived, paid the same attention to anatomy. 



232 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

1 Gericault veut posseder son cheval. II le tourne et 
retourne dans tous les sens. C'est une sorte de gymnas- 
tique qu'il s'impose.. II l'apprend dans ses moindres 
details. II ne neglige rien, ni son anatomie, et sa fo7-me 
interleave, ni les jeux de la lumiere sur la robe, ni ses 
mouvements, si difficiles a. saisir et a exprimer.'* When 
Landseer was examined before the Royal Academy 
Commission in 1863, the question was put to him whether 
he thought the then recently-introduced anatomical 
examination a change in the right direction. Sir Edwin's 
answer was, 'I think so : it is a very important branch of 
education* 

The two things, then, which go to the production 
of the animalier are, first, the inborn, incommunicable 
faculty of seizing instantaneously, and long retaining, 
the most transient gestures of animals, with a vividness 
sufficient for the purposes of art ; and, secondly, a scien- 
tific training in anatomy and drawing to reinforce the 
natural gift on all points where it may be insufficient, 
and give an element of accuracy and security. The 
first of these two possessions belonged to my obscure 
friend, whose humble talent may have interested the 
reader at the beginning of this chapter ; the second, the 
scientific acquirement, has been attained by the laborious 
perseverance of many who have left no striking or ad- 
mirable performance from the absence of the natural 
gift. Either of the two without the other is practically 
almost valueless. A patient and learned draughtsman 

• Giricault : Etude biographique et critique, par Charles Clement. 



ANIMALS IN ART. 233 



may, no doubt, draw the body of a horse so that the 
muscles and bones shall be in their places in a state of 
perfect quiescence ; but in animals the momentary atti- 
titude is the language and the life. The sculptor or 
painter of animals has indeed one very marked advan- 
tage over the painter of the figure — namely, this, that 
whereas the figure-painter is really exercising what 
Wordsworth contemptuously called a dumb art — that 
is, an art not capable of recording the language of the 
characters it represents, the art of the animal-painter is 
not dumb in this relative sense. A dog may bark, a horse 
may neigh, but it is not by these sounds that they ex- 
press the delicate shades of ever- varying emotion ; it is 
by a thousand varieties of gesture which few indeed of us 
can analyse, but which we easily understand. The 
animals are actors in a pantomime, clever beyond all human 
cleverness. A dog converses with his master by means 
of his eyes, and his ears, and his tail, nay rather by every 
muscle of his body. It follows from this, that whereas 
the figure-painter delineates a creature which (especially 
in modern times and in polite society) expresses little by 
the motions of the muscles which the painter can render, 
and much by words which he cannot render, the animal- 
painter delineates creatures whose best eloquence may be 
clearly expressed by his own art. The rank of animal- 
painting is therefore relatively higher than the rank of the 
creatures that it celebrates. It may be as great an achieve- 
ment to paint the mind of a dog thoroughly and absolutely 

as to paint the mind of a man partially and imperfectly. 

EE 



234 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

It is scarcely necessary to add, that all artists who 
have delineated animals successfully have seen them with 
the observing clearness of affection. Emerson says that 
love is not a hood but an eye-water ; it is so especially 
to artists. From what we know of men who have painted 
animals well in past times, it is evident that they felt 
towards them sentiments as far as possible removed from 
indifference. It is related of Da Vinci, that although 
several times hard-pinched for money he never could 
make up his mind to part with his horses, or the servants 
belonging to his stables, which he maintained at great 
expense. Horsemanship was Da Vinci's great delight, 
and he excelled in it. Rubens also, who painted animals 
grandly, rode out every day. • 

Rosa Bonheur began her career by keeping a pet sheep, 
high up in a Parisian apartment, and in her portrait by 
Dubufe she leans caressingly on a fine calf which she her- 
self introduced into the picture. Gericault had a passion 
for horses so strong that his biographer calls it * une ve- 
ritable frenesie.' When a fine team passed him in harness 
he would run by their side to watch them till he was 
breathless and covered with perspiration. During his 
college vacations he sometimes stayed with relations of 
his at Rouen, and there his great attraction was a black- 
smith's shop, where he watched the horses from morning 

• Gericault when a young man had for his two idols Rubens, and 
Franconi the circus-rider, and having remarked that the legs of Rubens 
were somewhat bent outwards with riding, he set himself to produce the 
same effect on his own by a wooden contrivance which he applied to them. 



ANIMALS IN ART. 235 

to night without intermission. He was an accomplished 
and most courageous rider, preferring always the most 
spirited horses. The same affection for the animals they 
draw is visible in several of our contemporaries. Brac- 
quemont will sit for hours together watching ducks in a 
duck-pond ; Charles Jacque, whose drawings of poultry 
are not the least remarkable of his works, is a great 
poultry-fancier. It seems needless to add that Landseer 
loves dogs, for he who does not must not only be inca- 
pable of painting them, but so utterly dead to all the better 
feelings of our nature as to be unworthy of mention in 
these pages. 



' 



20 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CANINE GUESTS. * 

Having heard that two very wonderful dogs were 
performing within fifty miles of my house, I invited them 
to come and visit me. The answer came by telegraph, 
not from the dogs themselves, but from their owner, M. 
du Rouil, and on the appointed day and hour I drove off 
to meet them. They were invited to dine and spend 
the evening; and as the weather was very wet they 
stayed all night and breakfasted the next morning, so 
that I had every opportunity of making their acquaintance. 
Madame du Rouil informed me that her husband had 
been for ten years a teacher in a deaf-and-dumb institu- 
tion, which had given him the idea of trying how far a 
similar method of education might develope the intel- 
ligence of dogs. He had also been a conjuror, and these 

* There is so much in this paper which most naturally seem incredible 
that I think it necessary to assure the reader how scrupulously I have 
endeavoured to narrate the facts simply as I saw them. On my honour, 
the narrative is, if not absolutely true, at least as true as I can make it by 
a comparison of what I observed myself with the observations of a dozen 



CANINE GUESTS. 237 

two professions had prepared him for the one he at pres- 
ent exercised. When he began to train his first dog it 
was not with any idea of future profit, but simply out of 
curiosity to see the effects of the sort of education which 
seemed to him best adapted for establishing a close un- 
derstanding between the human and canine minds. Seeing 
that the plan succeeded he began to take the dog with 
him to the entertainments he gave in Paris, and as the 
public were interested he went on educating his pupil. 
Since then he has educated two other dogs on the same 
principles, one of whom has completed her training, 
whilst the other is an advanced, but not yet a finished, 
student. 

I had a good opportunity, at dinner, of observing the 
master himself. There was not the faintest trace of 
anything like charlatanism in his manner. A very quiet, 
grave, serious, even sad-looking old geritleman, dressed 
soberly in black, he talked about places he had visited 
and about the political news of the day. The impression 
he made upon us was altogether favourable. He reminded 
me most of some respectable old school-master or libra- 
rian, who had seen a good deal of the world and reflected 
on what he had seen, but whose thoughts were tinged 
with a deepening gravity, the result of narrowed fortune 
and weakened health. I learned afterwards that there 
were ample reasons for this sadness. M. du Rouil had 
had two sons killed in the war and another severely 
wounded, whilst his daughter, a pretty girl of eighteen, 
had been killed by a shell at Neuilly in the sanguinary 



23S CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



days of the Commune. His house, too, had been sacked 
by the Communards, and a small business which his wife 
managed had been put an end to. The capital invested 
in that little business had been earned by the dog Bianca, 
of whom, and her daughter Lyda, it is time to give a 
description. 

Bianca, or Blanche, as her master familiarly calls her, 
is a bitch of the pure caniche breed. I use the French 
word because although we have an English one, ■ poodle,' 
I rather think that the word poodle does not distinguish 
between the real caniche and the chien-mouton, another 
very intelligent breed from which performing dogs are 
frequently taken. Of M. du Rouil's three pupils one is 
a pure caniche, the other (Lyda) is a cross between 
the canicJie and the spaniel, whilst the third is a chien- 
moiiton, thoroughbred. The caniche is silky-haired and 
has often patches of brown about the face, but the white 
hair is like snow, whereas the cJiicn-monton approaches 
both in colour and texture much more nearly to the 
sheep, and never has any patches of brown. Only 
Blanche and Lyda came to my house ; the other dog has 
begun to perform in public, but is not yet so accomplished 
as these two. 

They behaved at dinner exactly like common dogs, 
but when I offered Blanche a piece of cheese and asked 
if she knew the word for that substance, her master 
answered that she could spell it very correctly. I had 
invited a few friends to meet these learned animals, and 
when they were assembled in the drawing-room we made 



CANINE GUESTS. 239 



the little preparations which M. du Rouil said would be 
most convenient. A large octagonal library-table was 
put in the middle of the room with a cloth of one colour 
and a lamp in the centre. Round this table Madame du 
Rouil laid cards with all the letters of the alphabet, 
printed in large capitals. There was also a little hand- 
bell. At a sign from her master Blanche jumped upon 
the table and sat in an attitude of expectation. Then 
M. du Rouil turned to me and said, ' I promised you 
that the dog should spell frontage. Blanche, spell fro- 
mage' Blanche immediately set about her work and 
brought an F, an R, and an O, then she hesitated. ' You 
have only given us three letters, and there are seven in 
the word.' On this, she soon found M, A, G, E, and 
the word was complete. The next task was a trans- 
lation. We were invited to write upon a slate any Latin, 
German, or English word in which the same letter did 
not occur twice. Some one present wrote, in German 
hand-writing, the word $to, and M. du Rouil showed 
the slate to Blanche. She either read it or pretended to 
read it, and made a sign that she understood by putting 
the slate down with her paw. ' Now give us the French 
for that word ; ' she immediately brought C, and then 
H, E, V, A, L. ' As you are spending the evening at 
an Englishman's house, Blanche, would you oblige him 
by translating that word into English ?' Without hesita- 
tion the dog gave me an H, and with very little hesita- 
tion the remaining letters, O, R, S, E. 

Notwithstanding her success, the dog seemed to set 



24-0 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

about her work very unwillingly, and it was evidently a 
great effort to her. The authority of the master, though 
very gently exercised, appeared to be irresistible, ex- 
actly like that of a mesmerist over his patient. Blanche 
complained audibly the whole time with a sound between 
growling and whining, and occasionally a short bark of 
uneasiness. Observing this, I said that for the present 
that part of the performance might be considered satis- 
factory, and we would pass on to something else. M. 
du Rouil then told us that Blanche could correct bad 
spelling, and invited me to write a word on the slate 
with an intentional fault in it. He showed the slate 
to the dog, and said, ' There is a fault here, Blanche ; 
find it out, and show us first what letter ought to be 
effaced.' The word I had written was maison, but I had 
spelt it meson. The dog immediately brought the letter 
E. Then M. du Rouil requested Blanche to show us 
what letters ought to be substituted, and she fetched an 
A and an I. 

As Blanche seemed tired and worried with this kind 
of work I intervened on her behalf, and she was allowed 
to go and curl herself up in a corner, and eat cakes. 
Lyda took her place on the table, and a set of figures 
were substituted for the alphabet. Some arithmetical 
problems were written on the state and she resolved them 
(or appeared to resolve them) without a single mistake. 
A very pretty incident occurred at this period of the 
performance, for the master proposed a little mental 
arithmetic. 'Now, Lyda,' he said, 'I want to see 



CANINE GUESTS. 



24] 



whether you understand division. Suppose you had ten 
pieces of sugar, and you met ten Prussian dogs, how 
many lumps would you, line Frangaise, give to each of 
the Prussians ? ' Lyda very decidedly replied to this with 
a cipher. ' But now suppose that you divided your 
lumps of sugar with me, how many would you give me ? ' 
Lyda took up the figure 5, and presented it to her 
master. 

This was pretty enough, but for reasons of my own I 
was much more interested in something that happened 
immediately afterwards. M. du Rouil quitted the room, 
the door was closed after him, and he called out, ' Which 
is the least valuable figure ? ' Lyda brought me the 
cipher. Then her master said, ' Which is the most 
valuable figure ? ' the dog brought me the 9. After this 
I asked for different figures, which the dog gave me 
without a single mistake. 

It was Blanche's turn next, but this time instead of 
being surrounded with the letters of the alphabet she 
was surrounded with playing-cards. .M. du Rouil had 
another pack in his hand, and told us to choose a card. 
f Blanche, what card has been chosen ? ' The dog always 
took up the right card in her teeth. Then she played a 
game with a young lady, and lost it, after which she 
rushed from her seat into the corner with an air of the 
deepest humiliation. 

A very surprising thing followed the game at cards. 
M. du Rouil begged me to go into another room and 
leave a light on the floor with a pack of cards arranged 

FF 



242 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

all round it and to close the doors as nearly as possible 
without shutting them. This being done, he begged any 
one present to whisper in the dog's ear the name of a 
card to be fetched by her from the other room. A lady 
whispered the * knave of hearts,' it" I remember rightly, 
but in so low a voice as to be inaudible even by the dog, 
which made a mistake, and brought something else. She 
was then requested to bring the ace of spades, and she 
soon came back from the dining-room with the ace of 
spades in her teeth. 

Both the dogs played a game at dominoes. This 
was managed as follows : the dogs sat on chairs oppo- 
site each other, and took up the domino that was 
wanted ; but the master or mistress placed it, and kept 
announcing the state of the game. Their distress when 
they could not go on without drawing upon the bank 
was expressed in piteous whines, and amused us all im- 
mensely. Lyda was the loser, and she precipitately 
retreated to hide herself, with an evident consciousness 
of defeat. 

I had not quite done with my literary examination of 
Bianca, so I had the alphabet replaced and began again. 
I asked her what was the English for c/iien, and she put 
the letters D, O, G, into my own hand. Then I asked 
her to spell feu for me, and she gave me the three letters 
F, E, U. Here an incident occurred which, notwith- 
standing the marvels we had witnessed, thrilled us all 
with new amazement. M. du Rouil interposed, and said, 
very gently, * Blanche, you have spelt the word correctly 



CANINE GUESTS. 243 

in the singular, but cannot you give the plural ? ' My 
readers may believe me or not, as they like, but the 
truth is, that she took up the letter X between her teeth 
and came to me and placed it in my hand. I asked her to 
give me the English for feu, and wrote it down and 
handed it to M. du Rouil, but he said she had not yet 
learned that word, and this defect in her education could 
not be remedied at once. 

During the whole of this entertainment my mind was 
intently occupied with a single problem, What did the 
dogs really know ? I had been told a few days previous- 
ly, by a gentleman who had very keen powers of obser- 
vation, that a system of signals existed between M. du 
Rouil and his dogs, by which he made them understand 
which card they ought to take, and this gentleman 
believed that he had detected the most important signal 
of all. 'When M. du Rouil means no he advances 
towards the table, and when he means yes he retires from 
it.' Another observer, younger and much less intelligent, 
had told me that M. du Rouil, having been a teacher of 
the deaf and dumb, simply used signs with his fingers, 
which the dogs had learned to read. These two theories 
may be disposed of very summarily. When the entertain- 
ment began with the literary examination of Bianca, M. 
du Rouil stcod on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fire, 
and did not advance or retreat one inch ; whilst at the 
conclusion, when she gave the plural to the word feu, I 
myself occupied M. du Rouil's place, and he was seated 
in an arm-chair, like the other spectators, and with his 



244 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

back to the table. It is clear, therefore, that the theory 
about advancing and retreating is not an explanation. 
Now, as for the other theory, that he communicates with 
the dogs by means of manual signs, like those used with 
the deaf and dumb, I need only observe that M. du 
Rouil's hands were as motionless as his feet. When we 
began with frontage, pferd, &c, he held a tray in his 
right hand, the arm being pendent by his side, whilst the 
left hand was behind his back, the fingers closed, and as 
motionless as those of a bronze Napoleon on a chimney- 
piece. He did not even reserve to himself such liberty 
of motion as might have been secured by taking the 
letters from the dog, for when I proposed to take the 
letters myself he made no objection whatever, but sat 
down quietly and let me do the showman's work. It is 
certain that the communication was not made by any 
motion of the body ; this, at least, I can affirm quite 
positively. Was it done by the expression of the eyes ? 
At first we thought that this might be just possible ; but 
the table was octagonal, and the dog found the letters 
when her back was turned to her master as easily as 
when she could look him in the face ; besides, when M. du 
Rouil was seated, and I was the showman, he did not 
look towards the dog at all, but at the fire. Whatever 
communication did take place must have been entirely 
by intonations of the voice, but we could hear these as 
well as the dogs could, and with all our listening we could 
detect nothing like a regularly recurring and easily re- 
cognisable signal. When he asked Blanche to turn feu 



CJNINE GUESTS, 245 



into the plural, he did it exactly with the words and in 
the manner that you would use to a child at school. He 
often encouraged the dogs with such words as Allans, 
allons ! Cherchez, cherchez bicn ! Vite, vite, vite I but he 
went on with these encouragements exactly in the same 
words and in the same tone after the word was completed 
to put the dog's knowledge to the test, and she went on 
seeking, and then whined and rang a bell to say that 
there were no more letters needed. I had been told that 
Blanche could, of course, spell any word that her master 
could spell, because she only took the letters he fixed 
upon, yet he said she could not spell fire for me. This, 
however, may have been a ruse on his part, and I do not 
insist upon it. 

If the dogs had appeared to know rather less we should 
have believed that the knowledge was really theirs, but 
then they seemed to know too much. Lyda showed us some 
tricks with numbers, that are familiar to arithmeticians, 
but clearly beyond the canine comprehension. This 
satisfied me that some communication existed, and yet I 
was utterly unable to detect it. It is clear, therefore, 
that the dogs understood and acted upon a system of 
signalling which the intelligence of the human spectators 
was not keen enough to discover. I had invited several 
intelligent friends, and told them previously that my 
object was to discover the secret of the confederacy 
between M. du Rouil and his dogs, begging their best 
assistance. They watched him as closely as I did, but 
could detect nothing. 



246 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

Remembering an odd notion of Sydney Smith's, that 
people might be taught to read by odours, the idea oc- 
curred to me that M. du Rouil might contrive to touch 
the cards that the dogs selected, and curiously enough 
they certainly smelt them rather than looked at them. 
But how could such a supposition be reconcilable with 
the fact that M. du Rouil kept at a distance from the 
table, and could not possibly foresee the words that we 
asked for ? I only mention this hypothesis of reading by 
odour to show to what straits we were reduced in our 
guessing. 

As the dogs and their owner were to stay all night at 
my house, I determined to have a quiet talk with him 
w r hen everybody else was gone, and get at the secret if 
I could. So when we were quite alone together I plied 
him with indiscreet questions, and he was frank enough 
up to a certain point, but beyond that point absolutely 
impenetrable. 

He confessed at once that there was a secret, but he 
said, ' La ficelle est bicn cacke'e,' as indeed it was. Ac- 
cording to his account, which was probably quite true as 
far as it went, the dogs were like actors, who had not 
quite thoroughly mastered their parts, and he himself 
was like the prompter near the footlights. To begin with, 
Blanche really knew the Tetters of the alphabet and the 
playing-cards by their names, and Lyda really knew all 
the figures. In addition to this, he said that Blanche had 
studied about a hundred and fifty words in different lan- 
guages, something like twenty in each language, words 



CANINE GUESTS. 247 

most likely to be called for, such as c/zien, dog, horse, cat, 
pferd, canis, &c, &c. The restriction to one set of letters 
simplified the business considerably. But M. du Rouil 
confessed quite frankly that she could not get through a 
word unless he were present. On the other hand, he 
could not make her spell a word in public that she had 
not before practised with him in private. So it was with 
Lyda and the figures. She really knew the figures when 
isolated, and this had been satisfactorily demonstrated 
when he left the room, and she gave me the number 
asked for, up to 9. But he would not tell me the secret 
of the confederacy. I told him what guesses had been 
made on the subject, but he simply answered that I must 
have observed how impossible it was for him to make 
signs with hands or feet when he moved neither hand nor 
foot. 

Would he give me some account of the earlier stages 
of training through which these dogs had passed ? Yes, 
very willingly. The first thing was to teach a dog to 
fetch an object, the next to make him discriminate be- 
tween one of two very different objects placed together, 
and bring one or the other as it was mentioned by its 
name. In beginning the alphabet he put two most 
dissimilar letters side by side to begin with, such as an O 
and an I, avoiding the confusion of similar ones, such as 
O and Q, or B and R. Gradually, the dog became ob- 
servant enough to discriminate between letters in which 
the difference was not so marked. M. du Rouil told me 
that he had found the greatest difficulty in teaching 



248 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS, 

Blanche to distinguish between the knaves and kings in 
playing-cards, but that she learned the aces very promptly. 
With regard to the time required for educating a dog 
sufficiently to perform in public, he said that an hour a 
day for eighteen months was the time required, and he 
preferred a single hour to a longer lesson, because the 
dog's powers of attention were soon fatigued. He added, 
that it was impossible to educate a dog at any other 
time than the middle of the night, because the slightest 
sound disturbed it, and made it forget the work that 
had to be done. I inquired what, after his ten years' 
experience, was his opinion of the intelligence of 
dogs, and he answered, with great emphasis, ' that it is , 
infinite.' 

Beyond this he would tell nothing. The only sup- 
position not immediately annihilated by the facts, is that 
the tone of voice used in uttering the words ' A lions, 
allo7is ; Cherchez, cherchez bien ; Cherchez encore ; Vite, 
vite, vile,' conveyed to the animal, ' You are far from the 
card,' ■ You are nearer the card,' ' That is the card you 
must take up ; ' but even here there were great difficulties, 
for M. du Rouil continued, as far as we could detect, in 
the same tone after the completion of the word, and yet 
the dog never brought a superfluous letter. The mar- 
vellousness of so perfect a confederacy may be better 
understood by supposing a human confederate in the 
dog's place. Such a human confederate, not knowing 
the words to be composed, would be very liable to make 
mistakes, and bring a wrong letter from time to time ; 



CANINE GUESTS. 249 



but Blanche never made one mistake — never brought one 
wrong letter. 

I certainly observed that when she got near the letter 
she always hesitated between it and its neighbours on 
each side, but she always finally took the letter that was 
wanted. She got on much faster with one or two words 
than she did with the others, and seemed to need less 
encouragement. My conclusion was, that from long 
practice with certain familiar words (she had worked at 
the business daily for several years) she could compose 
those words with very little help. The last word, feu, 
and the X to make a plural of it, were given quickly, 
others not so quickly. The use of the X was clever, but 
not so surprising as it seemed to us at the moment, for 
with a dog so well .trained as Blanche it would be easy, 
I should imagine, to associate the word ' plural ' with the 
image of the letter X. Very probably Blanche had been 
taught, in her private lessons, to fetch that letter when- 
ever i pluriel ' was asked for. As for the translation, 
without going so far in credulity as to fancy that the dog 
really translated, I may suggest that from long practice 
there would certainly arise in her mind an association of 
ideas between cheval and horse, chien and dog, since the 
words must have been asked for hundreds or thousands 
of times in that close connection, so that she would at 
least be better prepared to spell dog, after having just spelt 
chien. 

An incident occurred in the course of the evening 
which showed some understanding of language. A little 

GG 



25© CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

girl wanted Blanche to come to her, but the dog kept 
away, on which Madame du Rouil said, ' Blanche, allez 
saluer la petite demoiselle.' She immediately went up 
to the little girl and made a formal obeisance. A lady 
present, the daughter of a landowner in the Sologne, told 
us that on her father's estate the shepherds' dogs were 
taught to go in four directions at the word of command 
— a droite, a gauche, en avant, and en arriere. 

The conclusion we arrived at was, that the perform- 
ance resulted from an extremely clever combination of 
previous training with scarcely perceptible prompting, 
that the dogs were really wonderfully educated and knew 
a great deal, though not so much as they appeared to 
know. The game at dominoes was decidedly the prettiest 
instance of their real knowledge, for they took up the 
numbers just as they were asked for. It seems evident 
that an intelligent dog might be taught to know a con- 
siderable variety of objects by their names. 

M. du Rouil told us an anecdote of Blanche which 
may be easily believed by any one who has made her 
acquaintance. He was going home one night from 
Paris to Neuilly, after a performance, and saw a man 
who was seeking for some object that he had lost. 
* What are you seeking ? ' he asked. The man answered 
that he had lost 280 francs. ' Possibly my dog may 
be able to find them for you ; have you any money 
left ? If you have, show her a piece of gold. Allez, 
cherchez, Blanche ! ' The dog set out and fetched first 
one piece of gold and then another and then a bank- 



CJNINE GUESTS. 25: 



note till the 280 francs were completed. Then followed 
many other anecdotes about dogs of which I select these. 
A lady said that she had known a dog that belonged to 
a celebrated publisher in Paris who had a country-house 
at Auteuil. Every Friday his family went to Auteuil, 
and always regularly found the dog there on their arrival. 
He went alone, through Paris, from the Rue de VAn- 
cienne Comedie, and he never made a mistake about the 
day. The family frequently went out on other days, but 
on these occasions the dog stayed contentedly at home. 
Another dog that she had also known had been bred in 
a strictly Catholic family, and would never touch meat 
on a Friday. Bets were made, and the greatest temp- 
tations used to overcome his conscientious scruples, but 
always in vain. He was shut up in a room during a 
whole Friday with meat in his reach, but preferred to 
suffer hunger rather than touch it. One of my friends 
mentioned a dog that he knew quite well which lost its 
master three years ago from small-pox, and ever since 
then, in all weathers, has paid a daily visit to the 
cemetery, where it mourns upon his grave. The widow 
goes to the grave on Sundays after mass, the dog 
knows this, waits for her at the church-door, and accom- 
panies her. 

Lyda has one quality which would make her invaluable 
to an artist. Every painter who has attempted to draw 
drgs knows how provokingly restless they always are, 
and how impossible it is to study them as we do the 
human model But Lyda poses as perfectly as any human 



252 CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 

model at the Royal Academy. I made a drawing of her 
the morning after the performance and was delighted. 
Literally not a hair stirred during the whole time. She 
had the stillness of a stuffed animal in a museum, with 
that perfection of living form which no taxidermist was 
ever yet able to imitate or preserve. A dog so perfectly 
trained as Lyda would be a priceless treasure for an 
animal-painter. Blanche poses fairly well, but she is not 
to be compared with Lyda. I wish I could give some 
notion of Lyda's eyes ; they have the strangest half- 
human expression, as if there were half a soul behind 
them. Her master says "hat she looks at him with an 
intensity that is quite "painful when she is trying with all 
her might to understand what he wishes her to learn. I 
declare that this creature's looks are enough to frighten 
you if you dwell uoon them, it seems as if some unhappy 
child-soul had been imprisoned in that ' canine shape. 
Are these poor dogs happy in their strange, unnatural life ? 
They are tenderly cared for, and their master says that 
whoever beats a dog gives evidence of his own personal 
stupidity, for a dog always tries his best to understand, 
and you can make things clearest to him by gentle teach- 
ing if you know how to teach at all. And still these dogs 
look over-wrought, and nervously anxious, they have 
just the very look which you may notice in over-worked 
professional men. Ah, poor humble canine brethren, 
specimens of mental culture, are we not in the same 
perilous trade ? And would it not have been better for 
all three o\ us if instead of giving ourselves up to letters 



CANINE GUESTS. 



253 



we had passed a careless, sylvan life under the good 
green wood ? * 

* M. du Rouil died a few days after his visit to my house, and his widow 
immediately sold or gave away the three dogs ; a clear proof of the truth 
of her assertion that she did not know how her husband managed them, 
or at least that if his method were theoretically known to her she was 
unable to put it into practice. The present owners of these animals can 
get no performance out of them whatever. I have now no hope of ascer- 
taining the true secret of M. du Rouil's confederacy with his dogs ; but the 
mere fact that so perfect a confederacy should exist proves the keenest 
intelligence on their part. Whatever may have been the signals used 
they were understood without error by the dogs, and yet the human 
observers, although using their human faculties at the full stretch ol 
excited curiosity, were utterly unable to detect them. 




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